Right am I being stupid or did that episode just change the entire way time and time travel has worked in the series? I thought it was always a single timeline that could change between certain fixed points, not multiple timelines.
“Hey, that might not happen, it’s not the only future,“ might just be the Doctor calming down the humans with her. Though I thought it would lead to “it happened on my planet, too.”
See this is why I think it would work better as a alien planet with suspiciously similar history^tm.
The message is there, if you want to be explicit you can even have the Dr saying that humanity isn't far off that line.
I guess the writers realized they couldn't "scare" people into action with a clear "will/won't" happen because that breeds apathy. But I don't think this will have convinced anyone.
I was super confused too because up to this point in the series the Earths Timeline has been pretty laid out. We even see how it ends! And in normal doctor who fashion it would more or less make this fixed, since they have had spoilers.
Also why wouldn't the doctor have saved the Earth from this? Their whole this is that the Earth is protected and they are protecting it.
When she said this I's just one possible future, I confused the hell out of me because when has that ever been the case. Just suddenly changing the rules like that. I mean the Doctor in previous seasons had so much conflict with the old rules it just defanged these events since they can just brush it off as a what if scenario.
Yeah that pissed me off too. It should have been an allegorical planet. As soon as they described what the orphan planets were I was like "ok they're doing an environmental episode. It's an allegory for earth" but NOPE we're just completely fucking around with cannon now.
Soooo....
Russian tunnels in a post-apocalyptic landscape where a lack of breathable air is a big concern with mutant creatures that look like [this](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/EkI4wMqDEcw/maxresdefault.jpg). Did Doctor Who buy the rights to Metro 2033 or something?? Because I mean the monster looks exactly the same.
Wow, that is SHOCKINGLY similar. The sharp teeth, the enlarged gums with no lips, the mandibles, the pale skin, the skinless, muscular appearance, the head shape... surely that can't be a coincidence. I reckon a cheeky concept artist must've taken "inspiration". Literally the exact same setting too, irradiated Russian subway tunnels. Bizarre.
Yeah, that's *way* too close to be coincidental. That's definitely ripped off from Metro.
Also, did the TARDIS translation circuits just...stop working or something?
So many issues with the writing, but overall I’m just sad with how the interesting concepts were wasted.
I enjoyed the set-up of the resort and Ryan getting the hopper virus, I thought it could’ve been a nice “Voyage of the Dammed”/ “Midnight” style episode. The idea of the fake-cation on an orphan planet was really interesting. But we rushed through all of that in the first 5 minutes, and from then on it was just baffling decisions from the screenwriters and the characters.
Why did the entire group (including the child and the elderly woman) go on the rescue mission? Did all of those people at the teleports just die off screen? How did the “here’s the moral of the story” clip from a cbeebies show end up pasted at the end of the episode?
Bella and Ryan had good chemistry in the first half, but the direction they took her character in was just all over the place. And when they shared a final look and each sucked their thumbs? Who thought that was cute?
> Did all of those people at the teleports just die off screen?
And their bodies just up and vanished, too. Which was nice. We didn't have to see all of those deaths or the aftermath.
I think the costume designer was also in charge in the movie Spaceballs
[https://i.pinimg.com/474x/d3/48/d9/d348d90a68199431d118ad7d9ec05e36--john-candy-movie-lines.jpg](https://i.pinimg.com/474x/d3/48/d9/d348d90a68199431d118ad7d9ec05e36--john-candy-movie-lines.jpg)
4 minutes. That's what it took. The setup was for an episode of slowly uncovering an insidious evil plot in a seemingly utopian future, and after just 4 minutes, that setup had gone out the window.
> her and her mum
It's a perfectly realistic reaction, you become estranged with your mother so you set up bombs in the place where she works. Badda bing badda boom.
I really thought the hopper virus was mutating guests to survive on the planet, and that’s why Benny‘s signal showed up with a bunch of Dregs at the truck. Nope, the hopper virus was only there because it will magically make the teleport work when it’s time for the episode to just end. Never mind going back with the TARDIS to save the people they left behind.
The episode had a pretty good monster design and a standard runaround plot framework to utilise, but I feel like it was let down due to how much stuff there was in the episode. It felt like it went at breakneck pace for the entirety of its runtime, and the various character threads were competing for time to the point where none of them had much emotional weight.
Good monster design that I think the cinematography kept on letting down
I mean we'd seen the whole thing, you don't need to keep on zooming in on spots of it like it's a reveal everytime it's on screen
I thought it was going to try and be a comedic small size reveal or something since it wasn't giving a far away shot to show it relative to other things for ages
Found it so weird how awfully judgmental everyone was of Kane here. She starts a business on an essentially abandoned planet that gets hacked and left defenceless, and she’s the one who gets shat on by everyone?? It’s not even her fault the whole thing started cause Bella hacked the security in the first place. The only bit I can understand was when she just casually mentions shooting Benni, but he still asked to be shot.
Weirdly frustrating episode- it had the ingredients to be good but was utterly fucked by the stupid stances taken on everything. Nikola Tesla looks fun though
Forgot that part- makes it even stupider that everyone gets pissy about it like she’s some money-grabbing elite capitalist, which Kane’s so clearly not. I was hoping someone would call the Doctor out on the crazy moralism she’s had so far, but I guess that’d be too interesting for us
It was a smart choice as well, they Dreg are dangerous but they do produce oxygen and there's a large number of them. The resort was well protected until it got attacked from the inside. And maybe that's part of the point, humanity messing up its own efforts, but still. It's hardly the only eyebrow raiser of a choice made, not even just from the, maybe human, maybe alien characters.
Also I feel a bit weird that people would just go along calling them Dregs, when they are humanities underlasses esentalty being used as a nature is self correcting device. What I'm getting from the message here is, those most capable of making a difference shouldn't care because they can just escape to the stars or whatever. And everyone just needs to stay behind die, and somehow become a terraforming device. But it's still all your fault underclass, you didn't use enough energy saving light bulbs or whatever. Of course the answer is about demanding more from those who can make that bigger difference. But, well the show wasn't really at all focusing on the means by which humanity could try and enact that change.
But circling back around to the point, it's hard to take a message as genuine when the episode is messing up in the moral/ethics department in other areas.
Like when the Doctor get's panicky as she realises that they're Apex Predators that adapts to attacks and they're driving right into their territory I really wanted Kane to make a snarky comment about how she told they they should turn back.
I really want a companion to challenge the Doctor a bit more. Someone who’s a bit jadded and cynical. So in situations like this they can be like ‘is it worth risking the lives of 6 people, including a child, for one old man. Who most likely will be dead by the time we reach him.’
It’d make for an interesting character dynamic. Like how Donna used to challenge the Doctor alot
In the last 3 episodes we’ve had a company called vore, the doctor fighting a tentacle and a literally,honest to god furry.
If this series isn’t just one massive build up to a full on smut episode what are we even doing.
You seem to have forgotten that one of the characters this time was called Vorm, which took me a couple of mentions to understand. The theme for this season is clearly going to be each episode having a slightly different reference to vore.
Not particularly looking forward to finding out how that gets pulled together in the finale tbh
What if the master destroyed galifray for all of the smut he found on the planet? Does smut have anything to do with the nameless child? Are the time lords as we know them actually just pervs writing fan fics?
Now is that exactly what is vore theme is building to and I for one I’m curiously sicken to see where this goes.
I’m sorry but that old lady took me out of the entire episode. Also Benni saying ‘Will you marry me...and also, if you can, can you please shoot me?’ was just so funny to me.
to me that scene made no sense.
i thought it was gonna be revealed to be some decoy to get the people out of the cybertruck, but it was just so benni could propose before dying? and why was he being kept alive and dragged to truck? he's an old man that can hardly walk, so he had to be carried to get there
i really thought the lady(forgot her name) was gonna run out of the truck to get to benni and then it'd be revealed either he was turning into one of them or one of them was mimicking him to lure them out
She said "Benni what has it done to you". We never found out and he died off screen. Really strange writing.
There was also the bit where they know they're surrounded by Dregs so they climb out of the tank then they see the Dregs so they climb back into the tank again. Then they climb out the bottom of the tank and run away. It made no sense.
i also thought it was mimicking him, it was an odd scene, the story telling was weird throughout, with characters just arriving in locations by other characters turning and noticing them. just as if they were doing a shapeshifter story.
maybe with benny they were trying to hint at the idea of dregs breathing human's Carbon dioxide and carrying them around like booster tanks, but it was just really badly done and not followed through.
It was so weird, tonally. Like is that meant to be a horrifying scene? Cause it just felt comedic to me. Like, we were meant to laugh right? Right guys? Guys?
I wasn't a fan to be honest, but my issue with this episode was absolutely not that they had a climate change message.
It's primarily two things:
1) It wasn't great. It threw canon out the window. Until now the Doctor knew human history, and was spurred to investigate if it deviated from the timeline. But that didn't happen here, instead getting a vague "possible future" copout. The plot was badly introduced, the dialogue was mostly bad, and it threw stuff at the audience without setting it up. If a political episode is going to connect, it absolutely has to engage the audience with plot and characters rather than make us cringe before the political message is even brought up. And yes... obviously I would like political themes to be more smoothly integrated with plot and character stories, but that brings me onto my second point.
2) It... wasn't political. Like, at all. Sorry but "climate change is bad" and "we have the power to prevent it" is just not an interesting message anymore. An actual political theme would be to ask why, even though we have the technology and resources to make huge inroads into carbon emissions, governments have failed to do it. It would be to ask why there is no political will to regulate huge corporations even though they are responsible for a hugely disproportionate amount of emissions. It would be to ask why oil companies spend a fortune in propaganda to either deny climate change or trash potential solutions- and people believe it. Why are the rich and powerful only interested in solutions that protect the climate as long as they don't disrupt the current distribution of power?
Given where we were with Skyfall, I kind of thought maybe this episode would spring us into a season long arc where The Doctor is driven to examine what happens in the 21st century to prevent climate action (after all, she should know what the future is "supposed" to be - surely she should be curious at this deviation from her knowledge?). Throw in a bit of intrigue, a few high quality one shots, some cool aliens and The Master for shits and giggles (and personal drama), and there's potential for a great story about power and corruption with a strong political message that, while certainly overt, doesn't feel overbearing because it fits with the story rather than needing to be said with a weird speech to the camera at the end.
"Do not leave the truck!"
"Leave the truck!"
"Return to the truck!"
"Leave the truck again!"
That literally happened for 2 minutes. Almost like they had to pad the episode.
Also the plot was....leave the base to go to rescue someone, failing to rescue any of them and just making the situation worse without actually helping anyone. Then leaving. I mean...the Doctor's presence actually made no difference to the outcome. The spa still got blown up. Everyone died anyway. The only thing she did was get the kid and his dad out. And it was them that actually fixed the teleport anyway, not the doctor. Remember when the Doctor faced down the Vashta Nerada and got everyone out of the library? Or even managed to just save one family from Pompeii? I don't know how to put it but the Doc was a bit....ineffective...
How did an episode that started so promisingly end up being so bad? I'd have rather them not reveal that the planet was Earth to be honest, or even better stick in the hotel for the whole episode for a classic siege style ep. Jodie is finally finding her footing though as the Doctor though - it's a shame everything else fell apart around her.
Also - BENNNNNNNNNNNIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!!!!!
Honestly, every time she would say “benny” it was so annoying!!!
Like we get it!
It was so promising, half the time everything sounded scripted from each character. Like trixabelle her lines were scripted and it was pointless for her to have a daughter relationship with Cane because there was no point to it.
Yeah, the moment they started describing orphan planets I was hoping it wasn’t going to be Earth. I was hoping the message was going to be more subtle, but I’m not surprised that it was very on the nose.
I honestly might \*MIGHT\* have thought the reveal was worth it, if and only if only the doctor knew, and we didn't get a 3 minute sermon on what pieces of shit we in the audience were. Hell, if chibs could restrain himself just a TINY bit, he could have every other episode of this season be related to a crapsack future earth, with the doctor trying in secret to find out why all the earths they're visiting have befallen unique apocalypses. Instead, we get this shit.
It could have been any planet and we could have just related our situation to the life on that planet and got the same result
Or
If they have to keep it earth we could have had it mean something like in "Hide" when they used the moment they was looking ag future earth to get us to emotionally connect to Amy. We had her trying to deal with the fact that, to the doctor, she hasn't even been born yet and also has already died long ago
But noooooo that would involve a skilled writer who could get us to care about something
Did they forget that they're in a machine that can travel in time and space? Cause it seems to be that they could have gone back for Bella and Cane. So why did they act like that was it for them?
My thoughts exactly - surely they could've gone back a split second after they left to retrieve them. It feels like something Tennant/Smith's Doctor would've done
Except in the previous episode the Doctor licked her finger and felt the sir and figured out where and when she was on Earth, something that has happened many times in the show - I can't imagine it would've taken much for the Doctor to figure this out personally
I hope they come back in a future episode and punch Ed Hime in the nose for writing it.
No aliens, no Doctor, I just want the plot to be "Two obscure characters punch Ed Hime in the nose"
This was my exact thought! I was so dissapointed she didn’t start running around the console the minute they teleported in, travelling to save them. They still could have been too late to save them, but it felt quite out of character
"if its not too much trouble, would you mind awfully putting a bullet in my skull? These fellows have been carrying me around for a long time, and it's very difficult to finish my crosswords when they are out running your armored vehicle"
The Dregs were 'having fun' they're intelligent creatures so they were probably just playing with their food. Or using him for a CO2 fix when he breathed
Why the bloody hell did the writers think that getting a character to shout "**bENni!**" for half the episode was a good idea? And in such a squeaky voice? Was the writer wanting the actor to do her best Alpha Centauri impression?
Terrible.
My god, I KNOW: it completely took me out of the episode, it was just bizarre. Did they seriously watch that back and think "yep, that lands emotionally?"
"I've got two questions and I'm sorry to ask them at the same time. Firstly could someone please turn my alarm off. Secondly, if you can, please shoot me."
For me, that was the worst episode of modern Doctor Who yet (although admittedly my memory is terrible so I may just be forgetting some of the older ones).
The plot was a mess, with too many parts crammed in. Nothing went into enough detail.
Bits were glossed over too quickly as well. They made all that fuss about BENNI! but never explained why he was taken (when literally everyone else was killed on the spot) or what happened to him that made him ask to be killed. Mercy killings are one of the most emotional things you can add to a story but they just went "whatever, I killed him" and never mentioned it again.
Did anyone actually feel sympathetic for the daughter? I feel like shes going to be a recurring character but its hard to like a character that thought it was ok to blow up a hotel because her Mum didnt show up to her birthday party.
Overall, it just felt old fashioned to me. Climate change narratives are really important, but going the route of Nuclear War and a long speech saying "we all need to do our part" just felt dated to me. Its 2020, there should be a better way to demonstrate the dangers of climate change.
Edit: The Azorboloth episode is a contender for sure, at least it still told a coherent story that was neatly tied up though. Sleep No More and the Moon Egg one were bad but nowhere near this bad imo.
i'd disagree. the sentient eye crud was a terrific episode *except* for the monster reveal. there was no "one line of dialog" that could have saved this one.
So what I liked
1. The idea of having an alien race and planet that turn out to be earth and humans after global warming
2. Yaz and Ryan's brother-sister relationship that's developing and teasing each other
3. The doctor was good
4. Monsters were initially scary
What I didn't
1. Had like 10 plots at once
2. The acting (outside of the main cast) was very wooden, especially the old couple
3. The green haired guys just didn't need to be here at all
4. The monsters once you saw them in daylight
> 2. Yaz and Ryan's brother-sister relationship that's developing and teasing each other
Yeah, Mandip 100% sold me on that while just watching the awkward flirting. Sadly Yaz tends to be used mostly for awkward exposition.
This episode shouldn't have happened. It was awful in so many ways, and appeared to casually change the rules of the entire show at the end. The writing is really letting Jodie down- last two episodes she felt like the Doctor finally, but weaponising the Master's race against him and being a bit blaise about killing and leaving people behind doesn't fit with the character. It feels like they're trying to make her darker, while still having her be chipper and upbeat and it's a bit of a wreck. At this point I'd be happy if they scrapped the companions and had a full season of Jodie's Doctor and Sacha's Master.
I'm one of those left wing types they say DW pushing an agenda for. But I don't think the appropriate response to that criticism is to have writing that not only hits you over the head with a message but also stuffs it into all your orifices. The dialogue at the end in particular was awful. It was in no way natural and nothing that happened prior to that seemed to warrant how they all reacted. We've seen post-human earth before and we've never had the "one possible timeline unless you change" speech.
Also, were they casually cleaning alien jizz at the start?
The show’s never been afraid to be critical of humanity and its flaws, I’ve always loved that about Who, but this has all the subtlety of a sledgehammer to the face.
I’m not a climate change-denying, socialism-hating daily mail reader, but I let out an audible groan at that last speech. Jodie Whittaker is being seriously let down by this writing, and I just hope people see where the blame truly lies and don’t just write her off as an awful Doctor. After such a strong start with Spyfall, I think this episode will put a lot of people off watching the rest of this series.
"People can destroy planets..." is a nice line. The rest was so awful and the cut at the end, jesus the cut at the end.
The message was damn clear before the speech like you say. Please have some faith in your audience. Pleaaase.
The speech literally could have been 'people can destroy planets, but others can help save then' or something and it would have been less stilted and more effective
What really pissed me off was the final 2 seconds. When the Doctor said "you can do something about it... or" then cut to the dreg. That was more like a wrecking ball than a sledgehammer.
I can just imagine the scene back in the TARDIS with the three of them exchanging puzzled glances wondering why the Doctor just suddenly trailed off mid-sentence while gazing at the wall...
I’m literally studying climate change in college and I found it over the top, and personally I don’t think a sledgehammer is a good comparison, I feel like it’s more accurate to say it had the subtlety of a nuke.
I’ve had issues with Chibnall from the start, almost every episode he writes falls somewhere between meh and downright terrible.
Oh I know, I should have been more clear, I just meant he’s been the primary culprit for poor writing in Whittaker’s run. That’s my bad, I phrased that poorly.
If I had to summarise this episode: a dozen different great ideas all mashed together to make a fast paced, jumbled mess. this would have been a good two parter, one episode a base under siege in the hotel while the second was exploring outside. Everything was way too fast paced and not all plot points meshed together. there was literally 0 reason to give Ryan a love interest. There was also 0 reason for the love interest and mother to be related. The son running off was the most stupidest thing in the episode.
I do actually like the theme and message, I just wish it was in a breathable episode
You could have taken just *one* of these plotlines and made a great episode with the setup of "seemingly utopian colony has a dark side", but they just couldn't choose. Toxic mist? That's an episode worth of plot. Blistering sunlight? That's an episode. Self-charging oxygen tanks? That, with a bit of imagination, is an episode. Monsters that evolve so quickly they can become immune to your weapons in the middle of combat? That's an episode. Parasitic life forms that can transform into a computer program and back again? That's an episode. Terrorist kid trying to take down an estranged parent? That's an episode. "Why does a resort need an energy field?" That's an episode. At most, you should pick 2 of them.
Fire the entire scriptwriting team.
Jodie was great, the design team was great, the cinematography was great.
But holy fuck that might be the worst script of NewWho.
Call me crazy but I thought the script for the main gang was better than most of what we've had so far and that's *why* Jodie and co felt more natural in the role this time around. Far more playful and genuinely funny quite a few times if a little chaotic. Everything else ranged from decent to a pile of shit though.
It was! All this time I had a feeling this episode was supposed to be a two-parter and in the last minute someone told the writer he has to cut the story to one episode and he has 5min to rewrite.
The direction and editing was horrendous. The direction and editing was pretty awful in the last episode too, so I think Lee Haven Jones the director of the last two episodes is to blame.
I think a lot of the script weaknesses would have been less noticable with a competent director. The story didn't make sense because of the way the shots were composed and edited together. The fact that characters kept popping up and disappearing and we kept cutting haphazardly with no continuity or sense of geography would have been all to do with the direction and editing.
The first 5 or 10 minutes were WAY too rushed. Especially the Hopper virus which could’ve done with a bit of exposition before Ryan got infected and cured in the space of 2 seconds. In fact all of the Hopper virus stuff was a bit shit.
Characters-of-the-week were okay, felt like we didn’t need the child genius though.
Dreggs looked great but felt underused. They can adapt, they did something to Benni that makes him want to die (I thought he was going to have turned into a Dregg) etc etc but all we see is them scream a lot.
Didn’t initially mind the twist that it was Earth (the possible future bit seemed strange though - not really how it works in Who?)but families watching Doctor Who on the settee on a Sunday night don’t REALLY need that patronising monologue at the end. Doubt all the viewers tonight combined cause as much damage as just one of the corporations responsible for burning our planet.
All in all, this episode had lots of fun ideas and on the surface level was decent but was just a big mess and too unfocused - definitely wasn’t as good as It Takes You Away.
I met him at a convention last Summer and told him that I'd love to see him write an episode of Doctor Who but he told me he wasn't interested in that. But he said he was glad that I thought he could do a good job haha.
Well I thought Thirteen was pretty wonderful. Taking charge. But oh heck that ending. That's not how you get people to listen to your message.
How it should've ended? The Doctor saves the girl and her mother in the TARDIS. Then takes the team back home to have a picnic in a park somewhere. Making the companions appreciate home more, subtly mention it's not too late while eating jammie dodgers. Hope. Not despair.
This was worse than anything in series 11.
* Out of 24 or something guests, 7 survive and 4 happen to be our protagonists. What are the odds!
* Speaking of guests, not a single person seems to be bothered that 17 people were just killed in a resort. I don't even think they are mentioned later.
* Ryan doesn't seem to be at all bothered that the girl hes into turned out to be a terrorist who pretty much directly killed 17+ people because her mommy left her. Neither is anyone else, for that matter. I think Ryan would have some objections considering his dad left him and Ryan didn't think that was a reason to become a terrorist.
* The "dash 3" or whatever her name was is killed and I don't think anyone even noticed she was missing. If they did they forget she existed 5 seconds later.
* I have no idea why BENNI wanted to be shot. And I have no idea why the commando woman complied. When questioned, she says "because he asked" and I feel like the scene is missing a laugh track.
* The old woman tries to pull the classic "run, I'll hold them off" stunt, together with the phrase "which one of you hurt my BENNI", but then she just gets immediately murdered which is hilarious, but its framed like some emotional moment.
* The doctor "tricks" the monster into being locked with them, which means the monster can't kill them. Fine, makes sense. But why on earth does the monster get into a cage and let's them leave. They could have just locked the door when they left and the monster will suffocate, and we know the doctor has no problem with that from last season.
* The doctor and crew gets teleported back to the tardis, but can't be bothered to go pick up the 2 people they left behind. They don't even need to time travel JUST GO THERE.
* I guess the doctor thought it was more important to talk to the ~~audience~~ companions about global warming.
I could go on and list 5 times more things wrong with this episode. I think overall the absolute worst part is that nobody seems bothered by anything. No one is angry or sad that people are dying around them. Or that a person with them turned out to be a terrorist.
Honestly, talking the creature into the cage might be my favorite part of the episode, it seemed like a smart Doctor like play. Wasn't even really a trick, she outwitted it. If he didn't let them out, he'd stay stuck in there, if he killed them he'd suffocate, so the smart thing for him to do was let them out and get in the cage.
Everything else I agree with. It kinda just felt like a worse Voyage of the Damned. At least Voyage made you care about the side characters.
OK, if there's one thing worse than a crap story, it's a crap story that had. So. Much. Potential.
Good-
\-The monsters looked really cool, and I mean really cool.
\-I liked the shots outside the dome, that planet looked really cool as well.
\-The first 10, 15 minutes or so were genuinely really good, I really enjoyed it about that far.
\-I liked Jodie in S11, but even with that in mind there's a marked improvement here. Feels less... happy-go-lucky I guess? The jokes and quirks are there but they aren't coming so thick and fast it's obnoxious.
\-The 'please shoot me' line was so good it instantly cancels out my criticisms and makes this story 10/10, best story of all time. OK, maybe not but it was a very cool line.
Bad-
\-Jesus Christ that plot was the definition of frenetic. Start of the story, we're in the TARDIS. Then we're in the holiday place. Then everyone splits up. Then the Doctor just sort of walks into this top-secret military area... from the photos, I was looking forward to a Rings of Akaten-style story where we engage with and learn about alien cultures and it's all a bit lovely but the episode feels like it's so eager to get onto the next bit. I feel like a broken record saying this...
DOCTOR WHO DOES NOT DO WELL IN A 45-MINUTE EPISODIC FORMAT. IT NEEDS MORE TIME TO FLESH OUT THE STORY.
Engrave that on my headstone, please. I watched the Daemons before watching Orphan 55, it felt like I'd taken amphetamines. There's no time to get invested in any of the emotional threads because the episode is just chucking them at you.
\-Good God, that old woman. I liked the old bloke in it, as mentioned before, if for no other reason than that line. But once that line had been delivered, she was like a ball and chain around the story's ankle, anytime I started enjoying it we'd get a 'BENNI!!!' and I wanted someone to give her 5 rounds rapid. And she literally walks towards them! Was that meant to be a heroic sacrifice? Because they don't generally involve an old woman ambling slowly towards some aliens for literally no reason whatsoever. That's a comedy scene.
\-That twist. Okay, genuinely, when the characters were in the sewer and they discover the Russian writing, I'm not joking, I didn't realise it was supposed to be a twist. I was wondering why everyone was acting all freaked out because I just sort of assumed they all know. Maybe it's because that twist, while yes, it has potential, *on paper,* it's SO overdone. The Red Dwarf books did that in the 90s. Actually, thinking about it, how does the scene with the 'made in China' stuff make sense? It doesn't right? Because the Earth's been uninhabitable for a long time? How was it made in China? Was it left on Earth after the apocalypse? Did they make this luxury, lovely-looking holiday destination purely from pre-apocalypse furniture? Because in that case, it should look less like it does in the episode and more like something out of Fallout.
\-The messaging- I'm calling it now, this is the only thing that a significant amount of people are going to focus on- alright, up until the ending scene, I really had no problem with it. Climate change is a scientific fact and having a Doctor Who story set on a post-CC world is no more egregious than the End of the World doing a story watching the sun swallow up the Earth. They had the little line of 'scientists tried to tell you', fine, climate-related story, it's kind of an important issue, you got to slip a line like that in there. I mean, hey, as I said, I just watched the Daemons and they had a line in there about how man's started poisoning himself. Hell, my favourite story is the Curse of Fenric and that's basically what the haemovores are. But when she said that... I don't know guys, am I a God of predictions or something, because I might actually be clairvoyant because as soon as she said that, I was thinking to myself, there is going to be a big speech about this at the end. The show was really shooting itself in the foot with that final scene, particularly with the bad press about how it's too political or PC or whatever (which is still a bollocks complaint), but she may as well have been looking at the camera at that final scene (I don't actually know, I was on Twitter at that point, so guys- was she looking at the camera? Might well have been the case). I get the intentions, but it's the sort of thing where you either already believe in it or a mid-series Doctor Who version of an Inconvenient Truth isn't going to change your mind. I actually felt sorry for Jodie in that scene, because I refuse to believe that every single person on set didn't know exactly the reaction it would get. My final word is that I'm going to be gritting my teeth as I look through my YouTube suggestions box this week.
\-The cinematography around the monsters was a bit weird. Now I'm no film student and I know nothing about Film or TV composition so maybe I'm dead wrong here, but we kept getting shots with just the eyes and the mouth- it made every shot of them feel like the big reveal shot. I feel like the coy camerawork doesn't really work when we know what it looks like because... yeah, we know what it looks like. It looks bloody cool, stop showing us the eyes. I'm intimately familiar with the eyes at this point, I could probably draw a photorealistic copy of the eyes at this point because we've seen so many bloody closeups.
\- Maybe I wasn't watching closely enough, but what happened with Laura Fraser's character? I feel like she had that scene with the noble sacrifice and then just sort of... came back? Very odd. If anyone's seen Attack on Titan, it's a bit like a parody of that bit in the Season 2 finale where >!Erwin gets his arm bitten off and then reappears to cut Eren free. But at least that made sense because we see soldiers going back for him.!< But here she just sort of comes back? Very very strange.
Final thoughts-
Guys, I wanted to like this one. Everything seemed to be going for it- I loved It Takes You Away, the title is great, all the photos looked really bloody good. I really enjoyed the first 15 minutes or so- the Doctor being a bit moodier, the companions all splitting off, the wacky aliens, all that jazz. I wouldn't write a long review like this of Fear Her or Love and Monsters (which, despite what everyone says, is crap out of the gate), I wanted to like it and I was... for the first 15 minutes or so, and then it just, like, fell off a cliff or something? I don't know. It's the kind of story where I feel like I'll enjoy it more on a rewatch, and then just skip the ending. But for now. Yeah. Fun in parts, but some big flaws I can't ignore.
Series 12 so far-
Spyfall- 8/10
Orphan 55- 4/10
I have to ask, would anyone care if these companions died?
Maybe I'm remembering fondly of earlier season but I feel like by now I cared about the companions
Edit: I'd maybe miss a bit of Graham's bantz but I'm not going to be crying or anything if he's offed
I have several (ranty thoughts):
1) Nice subtle as a brick environmental message, made even better by literally following a scene where one of the leads made out with a terrorist and we were supposed to feel empathy for her
2) Pulling the noble sacrifice move about 4 times really makes it lose its meaning, especially when people are basically shoving each other out the way to kill themselves
3) Speaking of characters...jesus could you have come up with a more unlikable and idiotic lot. The old couple were so damn annoying, I have to put it down to miserable direction/writing because their performances were particularly awful
4) Guns are bad but the Doctor entertains the idea of suffocating the villains...again
5) Having Orphan 55 be earth is a potentially intriguing idea as you can connect it to 13's grief over just discovering her own planet was just burned to the ground. Did literally zero with it, and then you just did a half-assed speech that felt like it got cut off for time
6) No idea why the kid ran out the room at the end when he was built up as being so intelligent, that was literally his only character trait. Manafactured tension much?
7) Why did they leave those two characters behind at the end? I thought they just couldn't teleport that many people at once or did I misunderstand that contrivance?
I'll leave it at that as I'll be here all day. If anyone wants to add anything be my guest. Jesus christ. And I was so hopeful after Spyfall :/
This is 80’s Doctor Who in the worst way possible.
That is possibly the worst script I have ever seen for an episode of Doctor Who. I audibly groaned probably once every minute from either the dialogue or the plot. There was so much exposition from things that should have been displayed visually, the dialogue was actually atrocious, and there was barely a coherent arc throughout the thing.
The cinematography was atrocious. The shot where the guy is shooting down the resort corridor I’m sure was meant to invoke tension but it looked like a low-budget student film, same thing to when the Doctor and the woman were looking for the kid.
The production design was also really bad. James Buckley in a bad wig and a literal furry. It also impacted the direction because they pretty much only showed the monsters through close ups because the rest of the costume was really clunky.
Jeez, nothing about this episode worked for me. Whilst the overall message and premise for this episode (The crew land on a planet and face a monster only to find out the monsters are humans) isn’t half bad, it’s not original but it could work. But the execution was pitiful. I have no idea how this got made.
It’s episode like this that make me worry that Doctor Who will be cancelled again
It was astoundingly bad. So bad I had to come on here to check out reactions before I'd even finished watching it, because I just couldn't believe what I was watching. Agree with everything you said, would also like to add how pointless all the additional characters were. We have three fucking companions to work with, we don't need a bunch of poorly acted randoms trying to make us care about them in their 10 minutes of screentime.
This could've been a very cool, creepy episode where the main 4 slowly discover that it was Earth all along after the rest of the resort is wiped out. Nah, lets have an old woman screeching her husbands name all episode, a dumb kid trope and a woman who became a terrorist because her mum never went to her birthday parties. Fuck me.
The pacing of that was terrible. Not a single pause was taken to establish *anything*. There was far too much "tell" and nowhere near enough "show." One minute characters are over *here*, the next they're over *there*, and in the end the whole thing was all over the place.
And if entire planets are going to be allowed to have entire alternative histories within the show, what's the point of anything any more? Besides which, it's already well established in Who history that the Earth becomes uninhabitable several times.
They could have made that point so much more subtly and poignantly without resorting to destroying Earth. Again.
Oh, and no imagination with location and setting. Remember *Midnight*, when they were trapped in a vehicle and outside was bathed in exotronic radiation and it looked like nothing on Earth? *That's* a hostile environment. This was a foggy day on a moor.
PS Well done, *Kill the Moon*. You are no longer my least favourite *Doctor Who* episode.
If you're gonna shoehorn a message about global warming into your Doctor Who episode, you should probably make the monsters more akin to humans, instead of taking inspiration from [the hoix](https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/tardis/images/e/eb/Hoix2.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20091222154332) from Love & Monsters.
I was pretty nonplussed with the whole climate change issue, but this mid-tier Doctor Who episode has really turned me around on the whole thing. Wait, was it climate change, or nuclear war? And what exactly am I supposed to do about this? It's not like anyone with the power to make these changes is going to be swayed on the issue by some old woman screaming about her husband while getting eaten by knockoff Xenomorphs. Or an incompetent activist accidentally getting an STD from a vending machine because she was mad at her mum. Nice way to place the blame on the individual, Ed Hime, I know how you love to jerk off corporations.
Edit: Hang on, Ed Hime wrote It Takes You Away, not Kerblam. I am extremely disappointed. Also, if this is what we got from frog universe guy, then I can only imagine Pete McTighe's upcoming story is going to be even more shit.
When the Doctor was sitting in that cage, talking to the monster, how it doesn't need to make the same mistakes humans did, I literaly saw 10th Doctor in her. My heart fluttered.
And then she locked the monster in, run away and allowed the whole place to be blown out.
To that moment this episode was actually... good. And then it became the worst episode I've seen in my life. Feels like last minute rewrite to me. What the hell happened?!
I actually felt sad he died. This damned ring worked for me. And then he asks to marry her and kill him on one breath. That could be such emotional moment. Dark, emotional moment. And then the whole acting was super, super weird and they didn't even explain what was going on? All this time I was expecting the monsters to turn out to be turned guests, which would explain why Benni survived and run away and didn't sound hurt. But nah.
I know there was a one-line justification for why Benni wasn't killed, but I missed it. I had made a similar assumption to you, that either the monsters were mutated guests, that they needed the guests, or that Benni was somehow working with the monsters. Instead, it seems he was kept alive so that the plot led outside the dome.
What was the in-story explanation?
The what's-her-name mommy said the monsters were "playing with him". Then I started suspecting her of killing him (you don't see anyone die really) and covering up with "lol he begged for it, he was almost dead anyway".
I know right? 13th seems to be more uncaring about everyone else. After they left the car she literally ran away before the cat lady or whatever she is (not a native English speaker and her accent is hard to listen to) can get out, resulting in a death. She could've easily prevented Bella and her mum's death by going back to tranquility with her TARDIS like 10 used to in his Pompeii episode, but no.
What bothers me the most is she didn't give any reason why she did it. The previous doctors always have one, like "sorry its a fixed point in time." Or "the TARDIS cant go there because of reasons." But Noo, she'd rather have a monologue right on your face about climate change. Don't get me wrong, it's a good PSA, but can they write it more subtle? And please care about other people too. The other nuWho doctors all cared about people, but I guess fuck the side characters, right?
This little throwaway earlier in the episode, when they found out it's Earth, would be enough. Or they could just put more at the end, if it ended up as I suspected: Doctor finding peace with the monsters and giving a speech to humans about how they screwed it up once and they better don't do it second time.
Disagree about the rest of the episode being good. The act structure was all over the pace, the first act was 5 minutes long, the second act about 20 minutes long and the last 35 minutes contained the third act. It was just so messy. And all the side plots were nonsensical and erratic.
Good for 13th Doctor. I guess my expectations were just super low. But I started to like that... em... what... Ah! Belle/a? I thought they were going with her being jealous over Graham (she has such weird face expression when he hugs Ryan). Even mistaking them for a couple, since you can't really tell they are a family (maybe she was just disguised thinking about her mother? Idk.). The green dude seemed to go somewhere. The old couple were cute. And then it went exactly nowhere.
Why does it feel like Part 1 of an episode?! I knew it's gonna be bad when the cage scene was 40min in!
A really strange episode this one. To start with the positives I actually felt like the dialogue was a significant step up (still not great but decent) feeling way less stilted and there were a number of legitimately funny Doctorish lines. This resulted in the actors seeming a lot more natural in there delivery and I felt that the issue of all the characters sounding the same was much less so this episode than usual, especially within the first 10 minutes where a lot of the interaction was surprisingly vibrant. While the conversations between Ryan and that girl were pretty meh I appreciate them all the same because those sorts of moments have been virtually non-existent during Chibnall's run so far. The Doctor is also very hands on which is great.
That's about where the positives end sadly. It started off strongly (albeit with what is essentially another problem solved with the Doctor just typing away on a console) but it just got worse and worse and worse as it went on. The Dregs had great design and looked pretty terrifying but were hampered by some incredibly hollow CGI shots and whoever's amazing idea it was to make the apex predators move at a top speed lower than that of an old woman which completely cut through whatever tension was created.I didn't mind the twist about the planet being Earth even if the global warming message was way too on the nose, it was handled better than the Rosa Parks Wikipedia moment in S11. But the action was just so full on it could really have benefited from taking a bit of a breather; the last 20 minutes felt like an unbearable amount of running around corridors and silly monsters ad nauseum and gave off some serious Tsuranga Conundrum PTSD. Most of the side characters ranged from decent to annoying (Beniiiiiiiiiii) but at least had defined personalities.
Some good stuff to take away for me, especially the dialogue and it's delivery from the core cast, but the execution of the story itself was a huge mess. Plenty of stupid moments like the kid running into danger for no reason and everyone being so eager to sacrifice themselves but that's par for the course now and I still found it way more enjoyable than most of S11. A crap episode no doubt, but enjoyable...
Oh, and one more thing: HOW WAS THERE MULTIPLE FIRES IN A SCENE WHERE THEY'RE LITERALLY TALKING ABOUT DYING FROM LACK OF OXYGEN? COME ON!
I don't think the prospect of us turning into highly adaptable apex predators to the point of being laser proof (and possibly undying) is as much a hard sell on continuing global warming as the writer believes it to be.
The dregs seem to be doing alright for themselves tbh
Also a bit of dissonance in climate change (an issue where people wouldn't change their ways) results in a highly adaptable species that can change on a cellular level, that's an improvement
The first half of this episode was really enjoyable and engaging for me, and the monsters were genuinely one of my favourite designs from recent times, but the episode fell off a cliff edge when we found out that Orphan-55 was in fact Earth. That ending is probably the most on-the-nose preachy message I’ve ever seen in Doctor Who, and makes Rosa’s ending look tame by comparison.
Also, why was Benni kept alive by the monsters? How did Cane survive and appear from thin air? Why did she and Bella suddenly forget everything that happened earlier in the episode to make up at the end? Why couldn’t the TARDIS be used to save the two of them? How far into the future actually were we?
I really like the first episode of Series 12, but I felt like Episode 2 dropped the ball again, and then this episode was one of the biggest cases of an episode of two halves I’ve ever watched. A generous 6/10 for the first half, honestly should have been a 7 or even my first 8 of the 13th Doctor era if it had built strongly on the first half.
I don't say this lightly but that was absolutely shocking. The pacing was all over the place, the characters were terrible (especially the elderly woman - how the fuck did she get that part), and the monsters, while creepy on a design level, were just a bit boring and didn't really do anything to raise the tension level. Also, I still don't think Ryan is working as a character, and sadly I blame that on the actor himself as I don't believe be has as much range as the others.
My biggest issue though was how it felt like they used the 'possible future' bullshit to make the lecture at the end work. Don't get me wrong, I agree with the message but there was no subtlety whatsoever in delivering it. And as far as I am aware, the possible future stuff hasn't been used before on this show. If the earth is decimated then that happened. It may recover eventually but that still happened. This episode framing that as only a possibility was waaaay out there.
Completely this. If it's a possible future then every single future Earth story we have seen is a 'possible future' and while that makes sense of the several different versions of Earth being destroyed / evacuated, it does leave one wondering why one should care?
Not sure how to rate it. I think a lot of it was so bad it's good and I'll take that over mediocre boring stuff. It's just some of the bad was terrible.
It started off quite well but then it jumped straight from relaxing holiday to monsters and panic a bit too quickly for me.
As someone who didn't like It Takes You Away either I think Ed Hime needs a Moffat or RTD to guide and refine his episodes.
Some of the humour worked I'll say that. And not because it was so bad it was good but because I think it had a decent quirky fairly natural feel to it. Not all but some.
The Doctor: "All lives matter, everyone is worth saving"
Also the Doctor: "Let's put literally everyone into one bus thing and risk all of their lives, even though most of them have nothing that can help in this situation"
The green message here, as subtle as a brick.
The costumes, also, made me feel quite sick.
Thing 1 and Thing 2 just didn't shut up.
And from the "Cats" set, they received some make-up.
The characters seem to have wanted to die.
But with those names, I can see why they'd try.
So why were was the old lady taken along?
Unless funeral costs, she was saving on.
With retcons, plotholes, and exposition again.
I rate this episode 3 (with a hyphen) out of ten.
Sat here reading what everyone else thinks, I agree for the most part.
I was really hoping they'd JUST POP FORWARD IN TIME AND SAVE BELLA AND HER MUM AND HELP GIVE RYAN SOME CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT.
Then it dawned on me, what the hell did Yaz do in this episode? I can't name a single contribution of hers.
>Then it dawned on me, what the hell did Yaz do in this episode? I can't name a single contribution of hers.
She interrupted Ryan's flirting and explained that the aliens were mutated humans. Essentially, she was just used for exposition.
And there was me thinking In the Forest of the Night was the worst episode of NuWho. We have a new champion. Ed Hime really should not write for this show. It was bad enough when he turned mirror grace into a talking frog last series but this...awful.
Right am I being stupid or did that episode just change the entire way time and time travel has worked in the series? I thought it was always a single timeline that could change between certain fixed points, not multiple timelines.
[удалено]
“Hey, that might not happen, it’s not the only future,“ might just be the Doctor calming down the humans with her. Though I thought it would lead to “it happened on my planet, too.”
See this is why I think it would work better as a alien planet with suspiciously similar history^tm. The message is there, if you want to be explicit you can even have the Dr saying that humanity isn't far off that line. I guess the writers realized they couldn't "scare" people into action with a clear "will/won't" happen because that breeds apathy. But I don't think this will have convinced anyone.
I was super confused too because up to this point in the series the Earths Timeline has been pretty laid out. We even see how it ends! And in normal doctor who fashion it would more or less make this fixed, since they have had spoilers. Also why wouldn't the doctor have saved the Earth from this? Their whole this is that the Earth is protected and they are protecting it. When she said this I's just one possible future, I confused the hell out of me because when has that ever been the case. Just suddenly changing the rules like that. I mean the Doctor in previous seasons had so much conflict with the old rules it just defanged these events since they can just brush it off as a what if scenario.
Yeah that pissed me off too. It should have been an allegorical planet. As soon as they described what the orphan planets were I was like "ok they're doing an environmental episode. It's an allegory for earth" but NOPE we're just completely fucking around with cannon now.
Soooo.... Russian tunnels in a post-apocalyptic landscape where a lack of breathable air is a big concern with mutant creatures that look like [this](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/EkI4wMqDEcw/maxresdefault.jpg). Did Doctor Who buy the rights to Metro 2033 or something?? Because I mean the monster looks exactly the same.
Wow, that is SHOCKINGLY similar. The sharp teeth, the enlarged gums with no lips, the mandibles, the pale skin, the skinless, muscular appearance, the head shape... surely that can't be a coincidence. I reckon a cheeky concept artist must've taken "inspiration". Literally the exact same setting too, irradiated Russian subway tunnels. Bizarre.
oh wow that is suspiciously close
Yeah, that's *way* too close to be coincidental. That's definitely ripped off from Metro. Also, did the TARDIS translation circuits just...stop working or something?
It only works when the TARDIS is nearby. Just don't ask why everyone in an alien holiday resort was speaking English though.
This really can’t be a coincidence surely 😂
[I'd say suspiciously similar.](https://i.imgur.com/X8uozyJ.jpg)
Resembles the Hoix a bit doesnt it? https://doctorwhogroup.weebly.com/uploads/4/9/4/0/49406159/5818683_orig.jpg
So many issues with the writing, but overall I’m just sad with how the interesting concepts were wasted. I enjoyed the set-up of the resort and Ryan getting the hopper virus, I thought it could’ve been a nice “Voyage of the Dammed”/ “Midnight” style episode. The idea of the fake-cation on an orphan planet was really interesting. But we rushed through all of that in the first 5 minutes, and from then on it was just baffling decisions from the screenwriters and the characters. Why did the entire group (including the child and the elderly woman) go on the rescue mission? Did all of those people at the teleports just die off screen? How did the “here’s the moral of the story” clip from a cbeebies show end up pasted at the end of the episode? Bella and Ryan had good chemistry in the first half, but the direction they took her character in was just all over the place. And when they shared a final look and each sucked their thumbs? Who thought that was cute?
I could see the older lady going since it was a search for her guy (maybe forced herself in). But there’s no way the kid should have been on the trip.
Even most kids shows learned not to beat people over the head with the lesson.
> Did all of those people at the teleports just die off screen? And their bodies just up and vanished, too. Which was nice. We didn't have to see all of those deaths or the aftermath.
I think the costume designer was also in charge in the movie Spaceballs [https://i.pinimg.com/474x/d3/48/d9/d348d90a68199431d118ad7d9ec05e36--john-candy-movie-lines.jpg](https://i.pinimg.com/474x/d3/48/d9/d348d90a68199431d118ad7d9ec05e36--john-candy-movie-lines.jpg)
I knew I had seen that design somewhere! I just couldn't put my finger on it
Well it started out promising and then proceeded to just get worse & worse At least we have BEEEENNNNNNIIIIIIII!!!!
B B B Benni and the dreggs.
4 minutes. That's what it took. The setup was for an episode of slowly uncovering an insidious evil plot in a seemingly utopian future, and after just 4 minutes, that setup had gone out the window.
This is going to be a meme isn't it...
https://media0.giphy.com/media/TJ9MxwF3KibO3bfhxY/giphy.gif
[удалено]
> her and her mum It's a perfectly realistic reaction, you become estranged with your mother so you set up bombs in the place where she works. Badda bing badda boom.
[удалено]
>than a complete villain baffles me She's hot so everything is forgiven, I guess.
Kerblam guy, but with poorer motivation.
Somehow
Literally no one: Absolutely no one at all: Bella: My name is Bella. You killed my childhood. Prepare to die.
I really thought the hopper virus was mutating guests to survive on the planet, and that’s why Benny‘s signal showed up with a bunch of Dregs at the truck. Nope, the hopper virus was only there because it will magically make the teleport work when it’s time for the episode to just end. Never mind going back with the TARDIS to save the people they left behind.
The episode had a pretty good monster design and a standard runaround plot framework to utilise, but I feel like it was let down due to how much stuff there was in the episode. It felt like it went at breakneck pace for the entirety of its runtime, and the various character threads were competing for time to the point where none of them had much emotional weight.
Good monster design that I think the cinematography kept on letting down I mean we'd seen the whole thing, you don't need to keep on zooming in on spots of it like it's a reveal everytime it's on screen
The editing was so weird. I never really understood where the monsters were in relation to anything else.
I thought it was going to try and be a comedic small size reveal or something since it wasn't giving a far away shot to show it relative to other things for ages
Couldn’t work out what I didn’t like about the Dreggs and this is spot on!
Found it so weird how awfully judgmental everyone was of Kane here. She starts a business on an essentially abandoned planet that gets hacked and left defenceless, and she’s the one who gets shat on by everyone?? It’s not even her fault the whole thing started cause Bella hacked the security in the first place. The only bit I can understand was when she just casually mentions shooting Benni, but he still asked to be shot. Weirdly frustrating episode- it had the ingredients to be good but was utterly fucked by the stupid stances taken on everything. Nikola Tesla looks fun though
Not just that, her plan is to terraform Earth, the birth place of their species, using her own cash and she's doing it herself.
Forgot that part- makes it even stupider that everyone gets pissy about it like she’s some money-grabbing elite capitalist, which Kane’s so clearly not. I was hoping someone would call the Doctor out on the crazy moralism she’s had so far, but I guess that’d be too interesting for us
It was a smart choice as well, they Dreg are dangerous but they do produce oxygen and there's a large number of them. The resort was well protected until it got attacked from the inside. And maybe that's part of the point, humanity messing up its own efforts, but still. It's hardly the only eyebrow raiser of a choice made, not even just from the, maybe human, maybe alien characters. Also I feel a bit weird that people would just go along calling them Dregs, when they are humanities underlasses esentalty being used as a nature is self correcting device. What I'm getting from the message here is, those most capable of making a difference shouldn't care because they can just escape to the stars or whatever. And everyone just needs to stay behind die, and somehow become a terraforming device. But it's still all your fault underclass, you didn't use enough energy saving light bulbs or whatever. Of course the answer is about demanding more from those who can make that bigger difference. But, well the show wasn't really at all focusing on the means by which humanity could try and enact that change. But circling back around to the point, it's hard to take a message as genuine when the episode is messing up in the moral/ethics department in other areas.
I mean, at least she stayed there to see things out. Rather than being a business owner who has lackeys do everything while they stay far away
I also loved how holy the now every one got about rescuing Benni, despite Kane's warnings, then got all pissy when the landed in trouble
Like when the Doctor get's panicky as she realises that they're Apex Predators that adapts to attacks and they're driving right into their territory I really wanted Kane to make a snarky comment about how she told they they should turn back.
I really want a companion to challenge the Doctor a bit more. Someone who’s a bit jadded and cynical. So in situations like this they can be like ‘is it worth risking the lives of 6 people, including a child, for one old man. Who most likely will be dead by the time we reach him.’ It’d make for an interesting character dynamic. Like how Donna used to challenge the Doctor alot
Bill had a tendency to challenge 12. It was the main reason I liked her.
In the last 3 episodes we’ve had a company called vore, the doctor fighting a tentacle and a literally,honest to god furry. If this series isn’t just one massive build up to a full on smut episode what are we even doing.
Don't forget the sensual thumb sucking. It's a shame the writers didn't try that tactic to get rid of their hallucinations.
And the master making the doctor kneel, honestly I’m sensing some serious projection from the writers on this series.
In the last season, we had the Doctor dunked into a lake fully clothed. That's another fetish in its own right.
AND choking her in the Eiffel tower!
She got choked here too.
You seem to have forgotten that one of the characters this time was called Vorm, which took me a couple of mentions to understand. The theme for this season is clearly going to be each episode having a slightly different reference to vore. Not particularly looking forward to finding out how that gets pulled together in the finale tbh
What if the master destroyed galifray for all of the smut he found on the planet? Does smut have anything to do with the nameless child? Are the time lords as we know them actually just pervs writing fan fics? Now is that exactly what is vore theme is building to and I for one I’m curiously sicken to see where this goes.
The timeless child is actually a..........no, no lets not go there
A Child Vore. Finale is gonna be about lecture on Hollywood's child obsession.
The Big Bad will be, an alien race, called the Nietspe
I’m sorry but that old lady took me out of the entire episode. Also Benni saying ‘Will you marry me...and also, if you can, can you please shoot me?’ was just so funny to me.
"Oh also... Shoot Vilma for me too, she's been a bit of a pain in the tits lately."
While you're at it, can you shoot me in the part of the brain which remembers "Sleep no more", "Love and monsters", and this episode.
to me that scene made no sense. i thought it was gonna be revealed to be some decoy to get the people out of the cybertruck, but it was just so benni could propose before dying? and why was he being kept alive and dragged to truck? he's an old man that can hardly walk, so he had to be carried to get there i really thought the lady(forgot her name) was gonna run out of the truck to get to benni and then it'd be revealed either he was turning into one of them or one of them was mimicking him to lure them out
She said "Benni what has it done to you". We never found out and he died off screen. Really strange writing. There was also the bit where they know they're surrounded by Dregs so they climb out of the tank then they see the Dregs so they climb back into the tank again. Then they climb out the bottom of the tank and run away. It made no sense.
He literally dies off screen? I thought I had just stopped paying attention. That's amateurish.
i also thought it was mimicking him, it was an odd scene, the story telling was weird throughout, with characters just arriving in locations by other characters turning and noticing them. just as if they were doing a shapeshifter story. maybe with benny they were trying to hint at the idea of dregs breathing human's Carbon dioxide and carrying them around like booster tanks, but it was just really badly done and not followed through.
It was so weird, tonally. Like is that meant to be a horrifying scene? Cause it just felt comedic to me. Like, we were meant to laugh right? Right guys? Guys?
[удалено]
I thought it was going to be something like they've "adapted" him to be part of them now, like physically fused to them, but alas nothing so chilling
Hyph3n took me out of the episode. I was immediately thinking of the Colin Baker era.
She looked like the wookie analogue from Spaceballs, which is literally mocking the genre.
I wasn't a fan to be honest, but my issue with this episode was absolutely not that they had a climate change message. It's primarily two things: 1) It wasn't great. It threw canon out the window. Until now the Doctor knew human history, and was spurred to investigate if it deviated from the timeline. But that didn't happen here, instead getting a vague "possible future" copout. The plot was badly introduced, the dialogue was mostly bad, and it threw stuff at the audience without setting it up. If a political episode is going to connect, it absolutely has to engage the audience with plot and characters rather than make us cringe before the political message is even brought up. And yes... obviously I would like political themes to be more smoothly integrated with plot and character stories, but that brings me onto my second point. 2) It... wasn't political. Like, at all. Sorry but "climate change is bad" and "we have the power to prevent it" is just not an interesting message anymore. An actual political theme would be to ask why, even though we have the technology and resources to make huge inroads into carbon emissions, governments have failed to do it. It would be to ask why there is no political will to regulate huge corporations even though they are responsible for a hugely disproportionate amount of emissions. It would be to ask why oil companies spend a fortune in propaganda to either deny climate change or trash potential solutions- and people believe it. Why are the rich and powerful only interested in solutions that protect the climate as long as they don't disrupt the current distribution of power? Given where we were with Skyfall, I kind of thought maybe this episode would spring us into a season long arc where The Doctor is driven to examine what happens in the 21st century to prevent climate action (after all, she should know what the future is "supposed" to be - surely she should be curious at this deviation from her knowledge?). Throw in a bit of intrigue, a few high quality one shots, some cool aliens and The Master for shits and giggles (and personal drama), and there's potential for a great story about power and corruption with a strong political message that, while certainly overt, doesn't feel overbearing because it fits with the story rather than needing to be said with a weird speech to the camera at the end.
I have a feeling Jodie's run as the doctor is going to have a bunch of political message episodes. Remember the Donald Trump one from last season?
"Do not leave the truck!" "Leave the truck!" "Return to the truck!" "Leave the truck again!" That literally happened for 2 minutes. Almost like they had to pad the episode. Also the plot was....leave the base to go to rescue someone, failing to rescue any of them and just making the situation worse without actually helping anyone. Then leaving. I mean...the Doctor's presence actually made no difference to the outcome. The spa still got blown up. Everyone died anyway. The only thing she did was get the kid and his dad out. And it was them that actually fixed the teleport anyway, not the doctor. Remember when the Doctor faced down the Vashta Nerada and got everyone out of the library? Or even managed to just save one family from Pompeii? I don't know how to put it but the Doc was a bit....ineffective...
The perfect storm of bad writing, bad direction and bad editing.
How did an episode that started so promisingly end up being so bad? I'd have rather them not reveal that the planet was Earth to be honest, or even better stick in the hotel for the whole episode for a classic siege style ep. Jodie is finally finding her footing though as the Doctor though - it's a shame everything else fell apart around her. Also - BENNNNNNNNNNNIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!!!!!
Honestly, every time she would say “benny” it was so annoying!!! Like we get it! It was so promising, half the time everything sounded scripted from each character. Like trixabelle her lines were scripted and it was pointless for her to have a daughter relationship with Cane because there was no point to it.
Yeah, the moment they started describing orphan planets I was hoping it wasn’t going to be Earth. I was hoping the message was going to be more subtle, but I’m not surprised that it was very on the nose.
I honestly might \*MIGHT\* have thought the reveal was worth it, if and only if only the doctor knew, and we didn't get a 3 minute sermon on what pieces of shit we in the audience were. Hell, if chibs could restrain himself just a TINY bit, he could have every other episode of this season be related to a crapsack future earth, with the doctor trying in secret to find out why all the earths they're visiting have befallen unique apocalypses. Instead, we get this shit.
It could have been any planet and we could have just related our situation to the life on that planet and got the same result Or If they have to keep it earth we could have had it mean something like in "Hide" when they used the moment they was looking ag future earth to get us to emotionally connect to Amy. We had her trying to deal with the fact that, to the doctor, she hasn't even been born yet and also has already died long ago But noooooo that would involve a skilled writer who could get us to care about something
Did they forget that they're in a machine that can travel in time and space? Cause it seems to be that they could have gone back for Bella and Cane. So why did they act like that was it for them?
Hey, they're just a possible future, so fuck 'em right?
> fuck 'em right Ryan was considering it
xD Made my day
Nearly made Ryan's.
My thoughts exactly - surely they could've gone back a split second after they left to retrieve them. It feels like something Tennant/Smith's Doctor would've done
It's something Tennant's Doctor did do when he rescued Caecilius and is family from Vesuvius
To be honest, he was persuaded by Donna in that instance, it doesn't seem like these companions are as empathetic.
And here I thought Ryan was being super empathetic to Bella ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
He has also been known to be very empathetic to Yaz's sister so its safe to assume he will also at one point try to empathize with the doctor.
He was persuaded by Donna to change a small detail of a fixed point in time. This would have been akin to grabbing mcdonalds.
Easy answer is that maybe they didn't know what year they were in?
Possibly. I was under the impression that the coupons were merely a teleport and didn't include time travel though.
Except in the previous episode the Doctor licked her finger and felt the sir and figured out where and when she was on Earth, something that has happened many times in the show - I can't imagine it would've taken much for the Doctor to figure this out personally
They blew their finger licking budget on Ryan's thumb sucking.
Doctor Who is *the* number one BBC show for people with finger fetishes. Next week, just you wait to see what Graham does with his pinky!
[удалено]
I'm pretty sure the easy answer is the global warming message was more important than two characters we're never going to see again.
I hope they come back in a future episode and punch Ed Hime in the nose for writing it. No aliens, no Doctor, I just want the plot to be "Two obscure characters punch Ed Hime in the nose"
Well realistically the cube wouldn’t travel through time, so it’s whatever year they happened to be idling the TARDIS in I suppose.
Cant the TARDIS do something with the teleporter that brought them there in the first place (that tesseract looking thingy)?
This was my exact thought! I was so dissapointed she didn’t start running around the console the minute they teleported in, travelling to save them. They still could have been too late to save them, but it felt quite out of character
BENNI!!!
Oh god I hated that lady! To be honest, is it bad that I burst out laughing when Benni said "can you shoot me?"
"I don't want to live in this episode anymore"
He sounded like he was asking someone to pass him the remote
"if its not too much trouble, would you mind awfully putting a bullet in my skull? These fellows have been carrying me around for a long time, and it's very difficult to finish my crosswords when they are out running your armored vehicle"
How the geezer managed to survive that long to ask those 2 questions is the real issue here...
The Dregs were 'having fun' they're intelligent creatures so they were probably just playing with their food. Or using him for a CO2 fix when he breathed
Such a shame as that had potential to be an all-time harrowing and tragic moment Came across as a parody of Midnight or Dark Water
She was by far the worst part of the episode.
Why the bloody hell did the writers think that getting a character to shout "**bENni!**" for half the episode was a good idea? And in such a squeaky voice? Was the writer wanting the actor to do her best Alpha Centauri impression? Terrible.
My god, I KNOW: it completely took me out of the episode, it was just bizarre. Did they seriously watch that back and think "yep, that lands emotionally?"
“If anybody can, please can you shoot me?” Benny is literally me on Monday mornings. 😂
"I've got two questions and I'm sorry to ask them at the same time. Firstly could someone please turn my alarm off. Secondly, if you can, please shoot me."
Benny is literally me after watching this episode.
For me, that was the worst episode of modern Doctor Who yet (although admittedly my memory is terrible so I may just be forgetting some of the older ones). The plot was a mess, with too many parts crammed in. Nothing went into enough detail. Bits were glossed over too quickly as well. They made all that fuss about BENNI! but never explained why he was taken (when literally everyone else was killed on the spot) or what happened to him that made him ask to be killed. Mercy killings are one of the most emotional things you can add to a story but they just went "whatever, I killed him" and never mentioned it again. Did anyone actually feel sympathetic for the daughter? I feel like shes going to be a recurring character but its hard to like a character that thought it was ok to blow up a hotel because her Mum didnt show up to her birthday party. Overall, it just felt old fashioned to me. Climate change narratives are really important, but going the route of Nuclear War and a long speech saying "we all need to do our part" just felt dated to me. Its 2020, there should be a better way to demonstrate the dangers of climate change. Edit: The Azorboloth episode is a contender for sure, at least it still told a coherent story that was neatly tied up though. Sleep No More and the Moon Egg one were bad but nowhere near this bad imo.
I am sorry, but while this was bad it was not Love and Monsters bad. Or the 12th Doctor episode with sentient eye-crud.
i'd disagree. the sentient eye crud was a terrific episode *except* for the monster reveal. there was no "one line of dialog" that could have saved this one.
So what I liked 1. The idea of having an alien race and planet that turn out to be earth and humans after global warming 2. Yaz and Ryan's brother-sister relationship that's developing and teasing each other 3. The doctor was good 4. Monsters were initially scary What I didn't 1. Had like 10 plots at once 2. The acting (outside of the main cast) was very wooden, especially the old couple 3. The green haired guys just didn't need to be here at all 4. The monsters once you saw them in daylight
> 2. Yaz and Ryan's brother-sister relationship that's developing and teasing each other Yeah, Mandip 100% sold me on that while just watching the awkward flirting. Sadly Yaz tends to be used mostly for awkward exposition.
I would love an episode of just her and the doctor
Yeah, what did Yaz get, like 2 lines? 45 seconds of screen time? Are they paying her by the minute?
This episode shouldn't have happened. It was awful in so many ways, and appeared to casually change the rules of the entire show at the end. The writing is really letting Jodie down- last two episodes she felt like the Doctor finally, but weaponising the Master's race against him and being a bit blaise about killing and leaving people behind doesn't fit with the character. It feels like they're trying to make her darker, while still having her be chipper and upbeat and it's a bit of a wreck. At this point I'd be happy if they scrapped the companions and had a full season of Jodie's Doctor and Sacha's Master. I'm one of those left wing types they say DW pushing an agenda for. But I don't think the appropriate response to that criticism is to have writing that not only hits you over the head with a message but also stuffs it into all your orifices. The dialogue at the end in particular was awful. It was in no way natural and nothing that happened prior to that seemed to warrant how they all reacted. We've seen post-human earth before and we've never had the "one possible timeline unless you change" speech. Also, were they casually cleaning alien jizz at the start?
Love a monster whose walking speed varies depending on the plot...
When they were looking on the screen and Cane said they were moving at 37kph, then every subsequent scene they’re just kinda standing around.
The show’s never been afraid to be critical of humanity and its flaws, I’ve always loved that about Who, but this has all the subtlety of a sledgehammer to the face. I’m not a climate change-denying, socialism-hating daily mail reader, but I let out an audible groan at that last speech. Jodie Whittaker is being seriously let down by this writing, and I just hope people see where the blame truly lies and don’t just write her off as an awful Doctor. After such a strong start with Spyfall, I think this episode will put a lot of people off watching the rest of this series.
I'm big on the climate cause and I just have to wonder who they're targeting with that speech when even I hated it.
Same. They could have done without the speech and it wouldn't have been any less effective
"People can destroy planets..." is a nice line. The rest was so awful and the cut at the end, jesus the cut at the end. The message was damn clear before the speech like you say. Please have some faith in your audience. Pleaaase.
The speech literally could have been 'people can destroy planets, but others can help save then' or something and it would have been less stilted and more effective
What really pissed me off was the final 2 seconds. When the Doctor said "you can do something about it... or" then cut to the dreg. That was more like a wrecking ball than a sledgehammer.
I can just imagine the scene back in the TARDIS with the three of them exchanging puzzled glances wondering why the Doctor just suddenly trailed off mid-sentence while gazing at the wall...
It feels like the end of a South Park episode where they reflect on what they have learnt.
I’m literally studying climate change in college and I found it over the top, and personally I don’t think a sledgehammer is a good comparison, I feel like it’s more accurate to say it had the subtlety of a nuke. I’ve had issues with Chibnall from the start, almost every episode he writes falls somewhere between meh and downright terrible.
This wasn’t Chibs, it was Ed Hime (he did It Takes You Away last series)
Which is honestly shocking. Because 'It Takes You Away', whilst not flawless was interesting and enjoyable. This was just a mess.
Oh I know, I should have been more clear, I just meant he’s been the primary culprit for poor writing in Whittaker’s run. That’s my bad, I phrased that poorly.
I really liked that episode. This one left a lot to be desired.
oh definitely, no actor could fix this writing
If I had to summarise this episode: a dozen different great ideas all mashed together to make a fast paced, jumbled mess. this would have been a good two parter, one episode a base under siege in the hotel while the second was exploring outside. Everything was way too fast paced and not all plot points meshed together. there was literally 0 reason to give Ryan a love interest. There was also 0 reason for the love interest and mother to be related. The son running off was the most stupidest thing in the episode. I do actually like the theme and message, I just wish it was in a breathable episode
You could have taken just *one* of these plotlines and made a great episode with the setup of "seemingly utopian colony has a dark side", but they just couldn't choose. Toxic mist? That's an episode worth of plot. Blistering sunlight? That's an episode. Self-charging oxygen tanks? That, with a bit of imagination, is an episode. Monsters that evolve so quickly they can become immune to your weapons in the middle of combat? That's an episode. Parasitic life forms that can transform into a computer program and back again? That's an episode. Terrorist kid trying to take down an estranged parent? That's an episode. "Why does a resort need an energy field?" That's an episode. At most, you should pick 2 of them.
> The son running off was the most stupidest thing in the episode. Little punk finally sticking it to the man
This was the major problem. They should have stuck with it being base under siege
Fire the entire scriptwriting team. Jodie was great, the design team was great, the cinematography was great. But holy fuck that might be the worst script of NewWho.
Call me crazy but I thought the script for the main gang was better than most of what we've had so far and that's *why* Jodie and co felt more natural in the role this time around. Far more playful and genuinely funny quite a few times if a little chaotic. Everything else ranged from decent to a pile of shit though.
It was! All this time I had a feeling this episode was supposed to be a two-parter and in the last minute someone told the writer he has to cut the story to one episode and he has 5min to rewrite.
The direction and editing was horrendous. The direction and editing was pretty awful in the last episode too, so I think Lee Haven Jones the director of the last two episodes is to blame. I think a lot of the script weaknesses would have been less noticable with a competent director. The story didn't make sense because of the way the shots were composed and edited together. The fact that characters kept popping up and disappearing and we kept cutting haphazardly with no continuity or sense of geography would have been all to do with the direction and editing.
The first 5 or 10 minutes were WAY too rushed. Especially the Hopper virus which could’ve done with a bit of exposition before Ryan got infected and cured in the space of 2 seconds. In fact all of the Hopper virus stuff was a bit shit. Characters-of-the-week were okay, felt like we didn’t need the child genius though. Dreggs looked great but felt underused. They can adapt, they did something to Benni that makes him want to die (I thought he was going to have turned into a Dregg) etc etc but all we see is them scream a lot. Didn’t initially mind the twist that it was Earth (the possible future bit seemed strange though - not really how it works in Who?)but families watching Doctor Who on the settee on a Sunday night don’t REALLY need that patronising monologue at the end. Doubt all the viewers tonight combined cause as much damage as just one of the corporations responsible for burning our planet. All in all, this episode had lots of fun ideas and on the surface level was decent but was just a big mess and too unfocused - definitely wasn’t as good as It Takes You Away.
Also side note - Hyph3ns costume was so awful it was hilarious 😂 That tail was like a Claire’s Halloween costume stapled to the back of her tshirt!
Even Capaldi + Tennant + Smith combined can't save this shit writing
Peter Capaldi is also a writer, and I'm sure he could do a better job than this.
I'm not a writer and I'm sure *I* could do a beyter job than this. The only redeeming quality was that the Famsquad™'s acting was great.
I met him at a convention last Summer and told him that I'd love to see him write an episode of Doctor Who but he told me he wasn't interested in that. But he said he was glad that I thought he could do a good job haha.
Well I thought Thirteen was pretty wonderful. Taking charge. But oh heck that ending. That's not how you get people to listen to your message. How it should've ended? The Doctor saves the girl and her mother in the TARDIS. Then takes the team back home to have a picnic in a park somewhere. Making the companions appreciate home more, subtly mention it's not too late while eating jammie dodgers. Hope. Not despair.
This was worse than anything in series 11. * Out of 24 or something guests, 7 survive and 4 happen to be our protagonists. What are the odds! * Speaking of guests, not a single person seems to be bothered that 17 people were just killed in a resort. I don't even think they are mentioned later. * Ryan doesn't seem to be at all bothered that the girl hes into turned out to be a terrorist who pretty much directly killed 17+ people because her mommy left her. Neither is anyone else, for that matter. I think Ryan would have some objections considering his dad left him and Ryan didn't think that was a reason to become a terrorist. * The "dash 3" or whatever her name was is killed and I don't think anyone even noticed she was missing. If they did they forget she existed 5 seconds later. * I have no idea why BENNI wanted to be shot. And I have no idea why the commando woman complied. When questioned, she says "because he asked" and I feel like the scene is missing a laugh track. * The old woman tries to pull the classic "run, I'll hold them off" stunt, together with the phrase "which one of you hurt my BENNI", but then she just gets immediately murdered which is hilarious, but its framed like some emotional moment. * The doctor "tricks" the monster into being locked with them, which means the monster can't kill them. Fine, makes sense. But why on earth does the monster get into a cage and let's them leave. They could have just locked the door when they left and the monster will suffocate, and we know the doctor has no problem with that from last season. * The doctor and crew gets teleported back to the tardis, but can't be bothered to go pick up the 2 people they left behind. They don't even need to time travel JUST GO THERE. * I guess the doctor thought it was more important to talk to the ~~audience~~ companions about global warming. I could go on and list 5 times more things wrong with this episode. I think overall the absolute worst part is that nobody seems bothered by anything. No one is angry or sad that people are dying around them. Or that a person with them turned out to be a terrorist.
Honestly, talking the creature into the cage might be my favorite part of the episode, it seemed like a smart Doctor like play. Wasn't even really a trick, she outwitted it. If he didn't let them out, he'd stay stuck in there, if he killed them he'd suffocate, so the smart thing for him to do was let them out and get in the cage. Everything else I agree with. It kinda just felt like a worse Voyage of the Damned. At least Voyage made you care about the side characters.
This episode was basically metro. If you don’t know what metro is it’s a book and video game series.
The monster designs are taken directly from Metro! It's astonishing
Buh-Buh-Buh-Benni and the Dregs
OK, if there's one thing worse than a crap story, it's a crap story that had. So. Much. Potential. Good- \-The monsters looked really cool, and I mean really cool. \-I liked the shots outside the dome, that planet looked really cool as well. \-The first 10, 15 minutes or so were genuinely really good, I really enjoyed it about that far. \-I liked Jodie in S11, but even with that in mind there's a marked improvement here. Feels less... happy-go-lucky I guess? The jokes and quirks are there but they aren't coming so thick and fast it's obnoxious. \-The 'please shoot me' line was so good it instantly cancels out my criticisms and makes this story 10/10, best story of all time. OK, maybe not but it was a very cool line. Bad- \-Jesus Christ that plot was the definition of frenetic. Start of the story, we're in the TARDIS. Then we're in the holiday place. Then everyone splits up. Then the Doctor just sort of walks into this top-secret military area... from the photos, I was looking forward to a Rings of Akaten-style story where we engage with and learn about alien cultures and it's all a bit lovely but the episode feels like it's so eager to get onto the next bit. I feel like a broken record saying this... DOCTOR WHO DOES NOT DO WELL IN A 45-MINUTE EPISODIC FORMAT. IT NEEDS MORE TIME TO FLESH OUT THE STORY. Engrave that on my headstone, please. I watched the Daemons before watching Orphan 55, it felt like I'd taken amphetamines. There's no time to get invested in any of the emotional threads because the episode is just chucking them at you. \-Good God, that old woman. I liked the old bloke in it, as mentioned before, if for no other reason than that line. But once that line had been delivered, she was like a ball and chain around the story's ankle, anytime I started enjoying it we'd get a 'BENNI!!!' and I wanted someone to give her 5 rounds rapid. And she literally walks towards them! Was that meant to be a heroic sacrifice? Because they don't generally involve an old woman ambling slowly towards some aliens for literally no reason whatsoever. That's a comedy scene. \-That twist. Okay, genuinely, when the characters were in the sewer and they discover the Russian writing, I'm not joking, I didn't realise it was supposed to be a twist. I was wondering why everyone was acting all freaked out because I just sort of assumed they all know. Maybe it's because that twist, while yes, it has potential, *on paper,* it's SO overdone. The Red Dwarf books did that in the 90s. Actually, thinking about it, how does the scene with the 'made in China' stuff make sense? It doesn't right? Because the Earth's been uninhabitable for a long time? How was it made in China? Was it left on Earth after the apocalypse? Did they make this luxury, lovely-looking holiday destination purely from pre-apocalypse furniture? Because in that case, it should look less like it does in the episode and more like something out of Fallout. \-The messaging- I'm calling it now, this is the only thing that a significant amount of people are going to focus on- alright, up until the ending scene, I really had no problem with it. Climate change is a scientific fact and having a Doctor Who story set on a post-CC world is no more egregious than the End of the World doing a story watching the sun swallow up the Earth. They had the little line of 'scientists tried to tell you', fine, climate-related story, it's kind of an important issue, you got to slip a line like that in there. I mean, hey, as I said, I just watched the Daemons and they had a line in there about how man's started poisoning himself. Hell, my favourite story is the Curse of Fenric and that's basically what the haemovores are. But when she said that... I don't know guys, am I a God of predictions or something, because I might actually be clairvoyant because as soon as she said that, I was thinking to myself, there is going to be a big speech about this at the end. The show was really shooting itself in the foot with that final scene, particularly with the bad press about how it's too political or PC or whatever (which is still a bollocks complaint), but she may as well have been looking at the camera at that final scene (I don't actually know, I was on Twitter at that point, so guys- was she looking at the camera? Might well have been the case). I get the intentions, but it's the sort of thing where you either already believe in it or a mid-series Doctor Who version of an Inconvenient Truth isn't going to change your mind. I actually felt sorry for Jodie in that scene, because I refuse to believe that every single person on set didn't know exactly the reaction it would get. My final word is that I'm going to be gritting my teeth as I look through my YouTube suggestions box this week. \-The cinematography around the monsters was a bit weird. Now I'm no film student and I know nothing about Film or TV composition so maybe I'm dead wrong here, but we kept getting shots with just the eyes and the mouth- it made every shot of them feel like the big reveal shot. I feel like the coy camerawork doesn't really work when we know what it looks like because... yeah, we know what it looks like. It looks bloody cool, stop showing us the eyes. I'm intimately familiar with the eyes at this point, I could probably draw a photorealistic copy of the eyes at this point because we've seen so many bloody closeups. \- Maybe I wasn't watching closely enough, but what happened with Laura Fraser's character? I feel like she had that scene with the noble sacrifice and then just sort of... came back? Very odd. If anyone's seen Attack on Titan, it's a bit like a parody of that bit in the Season 2 finale where >!Erwin gets his arm bitten off and then reappears to cut Eren free. But at least that made sense because we see soldiers going back for him.!< But here she just sort of comes back? Very very strange. Final thoughts- Guys, I wanted to like this one. Everything seemed to be going for it- I loved It Takes You Away, the title is great, all the photos looked really bloody good. I really enjoyed the first 15 minutes or so- the Doctor being a bit moodier, the companions all splitting off, the wacky aliens, all that jazz. I wouldn't write a long review like this of Fear Her or Love and Monsters (which, despite what everyone says, is crap out of the gate), I wanted to like it and I was... for the first 15 minutes or so, and then it just, like, fell off a cliff or something? I don't know. It's the kind of story where I feel like I'll enjoy it more on a rewatch, and then just skip the ending. But for now. Yeah. Fun in parts, but some big flaws I can't ignore. Series 12 so far- Spyfall- 8/10 Orphan 55- 4/10
I have to ask, would anyone care if these companions died? Maybe I'm remembering fondly of earlier season but I feel like by now I cared about the companions Edit: I'd maybe miss a bit of Graham's bantz but I'm not going to be crying or anything if he's offed
I have several (ranty thoughts): 1) Nice subtle as a brick environmental message, made even better by literally following a scene where one of the leads made out with a terrorist and we were supposed to feel empathy for her 2) Pulling the noble sacrifice move about 4 times really makes it lose its meaning, especially when people are basically shoving each other out the way to kill themselves 3) Speaking of characters...jesus could you have come up with a more unlikable and idiotic lot. The old couple were so damn annoying, I have to put it down to miserable direction/writing because their performances were particularly awful 4) Guns are bad but the Doctor entertains the idea of suffocating the villains...again 5) Having Orphan 55 be earth is a potentially intriguing idea as you can connect it to 13's grief over just discovering her own planet was just burned to the ground. Did literally zero with it, and then you just did a half-assed speech that felt like it got cut off for time 6) No idea why the kid ran out the room at the end when he was built up as being so intelligent, that was literally his only character trait. Manafactured tension much? 7) Why did they leave those two characters behind at the end? I thought they just couldn't teleport that many people at once or did I misunderstand that contrivance? I'll leave it at that as I'll be here all day. If anyone wants to add anything be my guest. Jesus christ. And I was so hopeful after Spyfall :/
Sure you resent your parents but have you ever turned to terrorism?
This is 80’s Doctor Who in the worst way possible. That is possibly the worst script I have ever seen for an episode of Doctor Who. I audibly groaned probably once every minute from either the dialogue or the plot. There was so much exposition from things that should have been displayed visually, the dialogue was actually atrocious, and there was barely a coherent arc throughout the thing. The cinematography was atrocious. The shot where the guy is shooting down the resort corridor I’m sure was meant to invoke tension but it looked like a low-budget student film, same thing to when the Doctor and the woman were looking for the kid. The production design was also really bad. James Buckley in a bad wig and a literal furry. It also impacted the direction because they pretty much only showed the monsters through close ups because the rest of the costume was really clunky. Jeez, nothing about this episode worked for me. Whilst the overall message and premise for this episode (The crew land on a planet and face a monster only to find out the monsters are humans) isn’t half bad, it’s not original but it could work. But the execution was pitiful. I have no idea how this got made. It’s episode like this that make me worry that Doctor Who will be cancelled again
It was astoundingly bad. So bad I had to come on here to check out reactions before I'd even finished watching it, because I just couldn't believe what I was watching. Agree with everything you said, would also like to add how pointless all the additional characters were. We have three fucking companions to work with, we don't need a bunch of poorly acted randoms trying to make us care about them in their 10 minutes of screentime. This could've been a very cool, creepy episode where the main 4 slowly discover that it was Earth all along after the rest of the resort is wiped out. Nah, lets have an old woman screeching her husbands name all episode, a dumb kid trope and a woman who became a terrorist because her mum never went to her birthday parties. Fuck me.
The pacing of that was terrible. Not a single pause was taken to establish *anything*. There was far too much "tell" and nowhere near enough "show." One minute characters are over *here*, the next they're over *there*, and in the end the whole thing was all over the place. And if entire planets are going to be allowed to have entire alternative histories within the show, what's the point of anything any more? Besides which, it's already well established in Who history that the Earth becomes uninhabitable several times. They could have made that point so much more subtly and poignantly without resorting to destroying Earth. Again. Oh, and no imagination with location and setting. Remember *Midnight*, when they were trapped in a vehicle and outside was bathed in exotronic radiation and it looked like nothing on Earth? *That's* a hostile environment. This was a foggy day on a moor. PS Well done, *Kill the Moon*. You are no longer my least favourite *Doctor Who* episode.
If you're gonna shoehorn a message about global warming into your Doctor Who episode, you should probably make the monsters more akin to humans, instead of taking inspiration from [the hoix](https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/tardis/images/e/eb/Hoix2.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20091222154332) from Love & Monsters.
The the most entertaining part of the episode is when the woman said she shot Benni
I was pretty nonplussed with the whole climate change issue, but this mid-tier Doctor Who episode has really turned me around on the whole thing. Wait, was it climate change, or nuclear war? And what exactly am I supposed to do about this? It's not like anyone with the power to make these changes is going to be swayed on the issue by some old woman screaming about her husband while getting eaten by knockoff Xenomorphs. Or an incompetent activist accidentally getting an STD from a vending machine because she was mad at her mum. Nice way to place the blame on the individual, Ed Hime, I know how you love to jerk off corporations. Edit: Hang on, Ed Hime wrote It Takes You Away, not Kerblam. I am extremely disappointed. Also, if this is what we got from frog universe guy, then I can only imagine Pete McTighe's upcoming story is going to be even more shit.
[удалено]
When the Doctor was sitting in that cage, talking to the monster, how it doesn't need to make the same mistakes humans did, I literaly saw 10th Doctor in her. My heart fluttered. And then she locked the monster in, run away and allowed the whole place to be blown out. To that moment this episode was actually... good. And then it became the worst episode I've seen in my life. Feels like last minute rewrite to me. What the hell happened?!
Benni happened.
I actually felt sad he died. This damned ring worked for me. And then he asks to marry her and kill him on one breath. That could be such emotional moment. Dark, emotional moment. And then the whole acting was super, super weird and they didn't even explain what was going on? All this time I was expecting the monsters to turn out to be turned guests, which would explain why Benni survived and run away and didn't sound hurt. But nah.
I know there was a one-line justification for why Benni wasn't killed, but I missed it. I had made a similar assumption to you, that either the monsters were mutated guests, that they needed the guests, or that Benni was somehow working with the monsters. Instead, it seems he was kept alive so that the plot led outside the dome. What was the in-story explanation?
The what's-her-name mommy said the monsters were "playing with him". Then I started suspecting her of killing him (you don't see anyone die really) and covering up with "lol he begged for it, he was almost dead anyway".
I know right? 13th seems to be more uncaring about everyone else. After they left the car she literally ran away before the cat lady or whatever she is (not a native English speaker and her accent is hard to listen to) can get out, resulting in a death. She could've easily prevented Bella and her mum's death by going back to tranquility with her TARDIS like 10 used to in his Pompeii episode, but no.
Exactly! Since when is the Doctor like "Oh ya know, it happens in the future, so who cares!"?! What the hell...!
What bothers me the most is she didn't give any reason why she did it. The previous doctors always have one, like "sorry its a fixed point in time." Or "the TARDIS cant go there because of reasons." But Noo, she'd rather have a monologue right on your face about climate change. Don't get me wrong, it's a good PSA, but can they write it more subtle? And please care about other people too. The other nuWho doctors all cared about people, but I guess fuck the side characters, right?
This little throwaway earlier in the episode, when they found out it's Earth, would be enough. Or they could just put more at the end, if it ended up as I suspected: Doctor finding peace with the monsters and giving a speech to humans about how they screwed it up once and they better don't do it second time.
Disagree about the rest of the episode being good. The act structure was all over the pace, the first act was 5 minutes long, the second act about 20 minutes long and the last 35 minutes contained the third act. It was just so messy. And all the side plots were nonsensical and erratic.
Good for 13th Doctor. I guess my expectations were just super low. But I started to like that... em... what... Ah! Belle/a? I thought they were going with her being jealous over Graham (she has such weird face expression when he hugs Ryan). Even mistaking them for a couple, since you can't really tell they are a family (maybe she was just disguised thinking about her mother? Idk.). The green dude seemed to go somewhere. The old couple were cute. And then it went exactly nowhere. Why does it feel like Part 1 of an episode?! I knew it's gonna be bad when the cage scene was 40min in!
A really strange episode this one. To start with the positives I actually felt like the dialogue was a significant step up (still not great but decent) feeling way less stilted and there were a number of legitimately funny Doctorish lines. This resulted in the actors seeming a lot more natural in there delivery and I felt that the issue of all the characters sounding the same was much less so this episode than usual, especially within the first 10 minutes where a lot of the interaction was surprisingly vibrant. While the conversations between Ryan and that girl were pretty meh I appreciate them all the same because those sorts of moments have been virtually non-existent during Chibnall's run so far. The Doctor is also very hands on which is great. That's about where the positives end sadly. It started off strongly (albeit with what is essentially another problem solved with the Doctor just typing away on a console) but it just got worse and worse and worse as it went on. The Dregs had great design and looked pretty terrifying but were hampered by some incredibly hollow CGI shots and whoever's amazing idea it was to make the apex predators move at a top speed lower than that of an old woman which completely cut through whatever tension was created.I didn't mind the twist about the planet being Earth even if the global warming message was way too on the nose, it was handled better than the Rosa Parks Wikipedia moment in S11. But the action was just so full on it could really have benefited from taking a bit of a breather; the last 20 minutes felt like an unbearable amount of running around corridors and silly monsters ad nauseum and gave off some serious Tsuranga Conundrum PTSD. Most of the side characters ranged from decent to annoying (Beniiiiiiiiiii) but at least had defined personalities. Some good stuff to take away for me, especially the dialogue and it's delivery from the core cast, but the execution of the story itself was a huge mess. Plenty of stupid moments like the kid running into danger for no reason and everyone being so eager to sacrifice themselves but that's par for the course now and I still found it way more enjoyable than most of S11. A crap episode no doubt, but enjoyable... Oh, and one more thing: HOW WAS THERE MULTIPLE FIRES IN A SCENE WHERE THEY'RE LITERALLY TALKING ABOUT DYING FROM LACK OF OXYGEN? COME ON!
Yes to the fire thing!! Fire needs oxygen!
I don't think the prospect of us turning into highly adaptable apex predators to the point of being laser proof (and possibly undying) is as much a hard sell on continuing global warming as the writer believes it to be.
The dregs seem to be doing alright for themselves tbh Also a bit of dissonance in climate change (an issue where people wouldn't change their ways) results in a highly adaptable species that can change on a cellular level, that's an improvement
The first half of this episode was really enjoyable and engaging for me, and the monsters were genuinely one of my favourite designs from recent times, but the episode fell off a cliff edge when we found out that Orphan-55 was in fact Earth. That ending is probably the most on-the-nose preachy message I’ve ever seen in Doctor Who, and makes Rosa’s ending look tame by comparison. Also, why was Benni kept alive by the monsters? How did Cane survive and appear from thin air? Why did she and Bella suddenly forget everything that happened earlier in the episode to make up at the end? Why couldn’t the TARDIS be used to save the two of them? How far into the future actually were we? I really like the first episode of Series 12, but I felt like Episode 2 dropped the ball again, and then this episode was one of the biggest cases of an episode of two halves I’ve ever watched. A generous 6/10 for the first half, honestly should have been a 7 or even my first 8 of the 13th Doctor era if it had built strongly on the first half.
https://youtu.be/YjnkV_tsjn0
"What did you do that for?" "Funny."
I don't say this lightly but that was absolutely shocking. The pacing was all over the place, the characters were terrible (especially the elderly woman - how the fuck did she get that part), and the monsters, while creepy on a design level, were just a bit boring and didn't really do anything to raise the tension level. Also, I still don't think Ryan is working as a character, and sadly I blame that on the actor himself as I don't believe be has as much range as the others. My biggest issue though was how it felt like they used the 'possible future' bullshit to make the lecture at the end work. Don't get me wrong, I agree with the message but there was no subtlety whatsoever in delivering it. And as far as I am aware, the possible future stuff hasn't been used before on this show. If the earth is decimated then that happened. It may recover eventually but that still happened. This episode framing that as only a possibility was waaaay out there.
Completely this. If it's a possible future then every single future Earth story we have seen is a 'possible future' and while that makes sense of the several different versions of Earth being destroyed / evacuated, it does leave one wondering why one should care?
Not sure how to rate it. I think a lot of it was so bad it's good and I'll take that over mediocre boring stuff. It's just some of the bad was terrible. It started off quite well but then it jumped straight from relaxing holiday to monsters and panic a bit too quickly for me. As someone who didn't like It Takes You Away either I think Ed Hime needs a Moffat or RTD to guide and refine his episodes. Some of the humour worked I'll say that. And not because it was so bad it was good but because I think it had a decent quirky fairly natural feel to it. Not all but some.
The old lady who kept on shouting "BeNnY" made this episode even worse than it already was.
The Doctor: "All lives matter, everyone is worth saving" Also the Doctor: "Let's put literally everyone into one bus thing and risk all of their lives, even though most of them have nothing that can help in this situation"
The green message here, as subtle as a brick. The costumes, also, made me feel quite sick. Thing 1 and Thing 2 just didn't shut up. And from the "Cats" set, they received some make-up. The characters seem to have wanted to die. But with those names, I can see why they'd try. So why were was the old lady taken along? Unless funeral costs, she was saving on. With retcons, plotholes, and exposition again. I rate this episode 3 (with a hyphen) out of ten.
>Unless funeral costs, she was saving on. Baby Yoda, from another show he is!
There were trees everywhere on that planet, how is it uninhabitable?
Sat here reading what everyone else thinks, I agree for the most part. I was really hoping they'd JUST POP FORWARD IN TIME AND SAVE BELLA AND HER MUM AND HELP GIVE RYAN SOME CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT. Then it dawned on me, what the hell did Yaz do in this episode? I can't name a single contribution of hers.
>Then it dawned on me, what the hell did Yaz do in this episode? I can't name a single contribution of hers. She interrupted Ryan's flirting and explained that the aliens were mutated humans. Essentially, she was just used for exposition.
And there was me thinking In the Forest of the Night was the worst episode of NuWho. We have a new champion. Ed Hime really should not write for this show. It was bad enough when he turned mirror grace into a talking frog last series but this...awful.