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Tag: Graham

The Power of Fan Service

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Review of The Power of the Doctor
Warning: This review may contain episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

There was nothing subtle about The Power of the Doctor. It was pure fan service, from start to finish. Some of it we knew about beforehand, and some of it came as a surprise—again and again—but it was blatantly obvious that showrunner Chris Chibnall wanted to check off every single item on his bucket list on the way out.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2022 BBC

For the most part, I was happy to go along for the ride. Only in the final thirty seconds or so did I balk. (Yes, we’ll talk about that more, but under the cut.) It made me want to use my full-on Mom Voice: I’m not upset with you; just disappointed.

But let’s back up for a while, and leave that moment for later. First, let’s talk about the bonkers hour-and-a-half of Jodie Whittaker’s last episode in the lead role. This was Chris Chibnall’s ultimate fanfic moment; he threw in every plot thread and character he could think of (and book), and wrote a huge fix-it fic.

For those who may not be familiar with fanfic (I am only peripherally so, as I don’t read fic myself, though my kids do), the biggest purpose of the genre—as far as I can tell—is to tell the stories with beloved characters that the fan writer really wanted to see/read in the original media property, but was never given. (In other words, all of modern Who is basically fanfic of Classic Who, show-run by Classic fans.) And one sub-genre of fanfic is the “fix-it fic,” in which the fan writer fixes something that they felt was inherently wrong with the original.

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Revolutionary Departure

Review of Revolution of the Daleks
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

Maybe I’m just feeling traumatized by all that 2020 threw at us and am thereby in a headspace where I am only prepared to find joy and not fault, but I was pleasantly surprised at how well the 2021 New Year’s special held up upon a second viewing.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2021 BBC

Usually I can really enjoy a new Doctor Who episode on first viewing, but when I stop to reflect, particularly when I’m watching again and preparing a review, I find aspects that bother me on levels anywhere from mild annoyance to outright ruining the episode for me. (This is especially true of those written by Moffat, who specializes in pacing his stories so fast that you don’t have time to notice its flaws that first time.) This time, however, nothing killed the buzz.

Not to say I thought it was the best thing since sliced bread. I think I’m too numb these days to be that effusive. But since I didn’t go into the episode expecting great things—it was a holiday special; I wanted a romp, and that’s what I got—I didn’t come out disappointed. In fact, I came out feeling fairly impressed. Because the thing about Revolution of the Daleks is that its purpose, more than being a holiday special, was to be the farewell story for Ryan and Graham. And in that respect, it did a damn good job.

I think it’s fair to say at this point that the audience has become pretty inured to Daleks. (Terry Nation’s estate is doing no one any favors by insisting that Doctor Who use the damn things every calendar year in order to keep the usage rights.) Personally I kind of roll my eyes every time they show up again, so the entire Dalek storyline was very peripheral to my experience of this episode. What made the special special was the return of Captain Jack Harkness (as more than a teaser) and the ending of two Companions’ time in the TARDIS.

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Confession #141: I’m Psyched for the New Year’s Special

No matter what part of the world one lives in, 2020 has been rough. Many of us are simply fighting for survival, whether our struggles are medical, financial, psychological, of some combination thereof. It’s easy to push things like art (however one defines that) to the background—it’s not important now; how could I waste my time on that; I’ve got to save my energy…

At the same time, though, art is what keeps us alive. Streaming services have been doing booming business as lockdowns and quarantines continue to stretch into an unknown future. People turn to various forms of art to help keep us sane—to films and television, tabletop and video games, books and comics and fanfics.

That’s why I’ve made room in my heart to get psyched for the upcoming Doctor Who holiday special. Perhaps you are, like me, well and truly sick of Daleks already (thanks so much to Terry Nation’s estate for making them a “use them at least once a year or lose the license” entity), but they’re not the only returning characters. When the official trailer for Revolution of the Daleks was released about a week and a half ago, we all learned that Captain Jack Harkness would be returning to our screens, and for more than a single scene.

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Everything Changes

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Review of The Timeless Children
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

For better or worse, showrunner Chris Chibnall has left an indelible mark on Doctor Who. Series 12 finale The Timeless Children was packed with canon-expanding details that fans will be arguing about for decades to come.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2020 BBC

Whether you loved it or hated it (there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of in-between in the chatter I’ve seen), there was a lot to wrap our minds around. Did the Doctor see truth or elaborate lies in the Matrix? What is truth? Does it matter?

I choose to believe the Doctor saw the truth. Among other things, it might explain how she really could be the Other of Time Lord mythology. But mostly, I just think it’s a fantastic twist that simultaneously upends everything we thought we knew about the Doctor and ties in a bunch of things that previously made little or no sense.

The quintessential example of canonical inconsistency, of course, is all those faces that showed up when Morbius challenged the Fourth Doctor to look back on his previous lives, and they went back past the Hartnell incarnation. Add to that the question of how many regenerations a Time Lord has, and you get a recipe for confusion.

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The Sum of Its Parts

Review of Ascension of the Cybermen
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

The Cybermen (well, one, anyway) crashed unexpectedly onto our screens last week, beating the series finale to the punch. Even so, Ascension had some quality Cybermen content, making them legitimately chilling again.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2020 BBC

Perhaps tellingly, though, what I found most alarming about this version of a Cyber-invasion was how Dalek-y they were. Viewing that pre-credit voiceover through the lens of current events and the rise of neo-Nazism set an alarming tone for me, making the Lone Cyberman’s final declaration of war on all life particularly unnerving.

As far as advancing the series-long story arc, though, it was difficult to get any purchase on events before the final scene (on which, more in a moment). Until then, the plot, though filled with tension for the safety of the fam, didn’t move beyond a typical Cybermen story. Yes, the Doctor’s enemies were (still) out to take over the entirety of the human race. Yes, there’s shitload of them (roughly a thousand per bay, ten bays per level, a few hundred levels works out to a few million Cyber-soldiers on this ship alone). Yes, there’s one particularly off-his-rocker Cyberman who “makes other Cybermen scream.” But it’s still just a story about the Cyberman threat.

Then those final moments arrive, and something plot-y starts to coalesce. There’s Gallifrey on the other side of the Boundary, and suddenly it’s not all about the Cybermen anymore.

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Haunting Choices

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Review of The Haunting of Villa Diodati
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

It’s my usual practice not only to watch an episode twice before reviewing it, but also to avoid reading anyone else’s reviews or discussing the episode in detail with anyone else before I write, so my reactions are as free from outside influence as possible. This time, that went out the window before the opening credits even rolled.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2020 BBC

As you may have seen in my Day Three roundup, I had the great fortune to be able to watch the episode at Gallifrey One, in a ballroom packed full of fans. Everyone was so keyed up that I don’t think any of us could help but love the episode. There were simultaneous gasps, raucous bursts of laughter, and immediate cessation of said laughter the moment dialog started back up (a room full of Doctor Who fans know it’s important not to talk over the lines). And it was exceedingly gratifying to have the whole room share my emotions as the story unfolded, confirming again that at this con, I’m completely surrounded by people who get it.

With all that coloring my initial experience, I knew I’d need a second viewing to gain any sense of objectivity whatsoever. Besides, I hadn’t been able to hear a large portion of the dialog and thus to keep track of everything that was going on. So with great anticipation, I dived back in.

I doubt I’ll ever be able to watch this one entirely objectively, simply because I’ll hear my Gally family’s reactions in my head every time I watch it. But even in broad daylight, with a critical eye out, and a clear understanding of every line of dialog, I came out of the episode with the warm glow of a great episode sitting snugly inside my chest.

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Fingers Crossed

Review of Can You Hear Me?
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

I’m not a fan of the horror genre, whether it be on screen or written, nor have I ever found Doctor Who particularly to fit that description.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2020 BBC

I have to say, though, that whatever they’re doing this series—whether that’s the scripts, the effects, the scoring, or what—has been really effective in giving me that slightly alarming sense of foreboding that lets one know there’s something amiss. And I’ve even enjoyed it. But that chill factor is only the superficial layer dressing up the core of this story.

In one way, the episode is an example of the “visit home” type that has become more and more common over the years of modern Who. The Companions want to dip their toes back into their mundane lives, and the Doctor either gets embroiled in something odd happening where they are—often involving their families—or gets sidetracked on something completely different that turns out to be related. In this case, it’s the latter, and we end up with the convergence of four distinct threads stemming from the Doctor (random creatures in a mental hospital in 14th-century Aleppo) and each of her Companions (Ryan: “My mate’s been taken!” / Yaz: “There was a figure in our flat.” / Graham: “I keep seeing these images of planets like they’re being projected into my mind.”).

In another way, in my opinion, the episode hints at a larger series arc. Although there is eventually a clear reason for the Chagaska, the nightmare creatures of the opening, to be so enigmatic that even the TARDIS can’t identify them, it seems unlikely to me that such a thing happening more than once in a single series is coincidental.

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Catching Our Breath

Review of Praxeus
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

Let’s be honest: anything was going to be a letdown after the huge curveball we got thrown last week. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that Praxeus came across as merely “adequate” as we catch our breath and let last week’s ideas percolate in our minds.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2020 BBC

Which is not to say it was bad. I just wasn’t one that feels likely to stick out in my mind in years to come when I think back on this series. What it did have, though, was more great character interactions and a high creep factor.

It also employs a really effective method for splitting up a large TARDIS crew and giving all the characters interesting and important things to do. I love that the three locations around the planet allow the “fam” to explore different pieces of this puzzle and show the audience how much the Companions have grown during their tenure with the Doctor.

Watching each of them striking out without her supervision, being competent, and helping to solve the problem at hand, all while shepherding new people along, makes me feel like they’ve all really come into their own. Perhaps best, at one point Yaz even takes the initiative, following her own lead with Gabriela as her sidekick. It put me in mind of Ace, with the way she tended to pick up her own Companions nearly every adventure, and gave me hints of Clara, too.

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Bombshell

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Review of Fugitive of the Judoon
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

In Jodie Whitaker’s first series, I often felt that showrunner Chris Chibnall was playing it safe, not going too far outside the fan comfort zone in his storytelling while fandom got used to a casting choice that definitely stretched some fans’ limits. Not so this series.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2020 BBC

If by some miracle you’ve neither seen the episode yourself nor been spoiled, then by all means stop reading now and go watch it. Immediately. As someone who managed to avoid spoilers, I can attest to the fact that Fugitive of the Judoon is worth watching cold.

I’ll admit that I was actually a little surprised by the magnitude of the reveal. Given the show’s history with teasing news (like the hype before they announced that Richard E. Grant would be playing a guest role), I was unimpressed with the publicity tweets leading up to this week. When they teased “Thought the Master returning was big? You won’t believe what happens this week!” I rolled my eyes.

But writer Vinay Patel (Demons of the Punjab), along with Chibnall, who also got billing as a writer for the episode, caught my attention and kept it the whole way through, ratcheting up the suspense until the key moment. And then I was kicking myself for not catching on sooner.

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AC/DC

Review of Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

Last week we had a story that beat us over the head with its message, a moralistic cautionary tale. This week we are bombarded with notes on how brilliant the too-often-overlooked inventor Nikola Tesla was. All in all, I prefer the accolades.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2020 BBC

It seems to me that this series so far is all about the various writers’ favorite topics. Whether it’s championing a particular cause (combatting climate change) or highlighting the awesomeness of lesser known historical figures (Ada Lovelace, Noor Inayat Khan, Nikola Tesla), the focus for three of the four episodes to date has been more on the real world than the fantastical.

Not to say such focus is necessarily bad—there is certainly a place for those things, especially in a show like Doctor Who. I am simply feeling a little overwhelmed by what feels to me like the incessant drumbeat of authorial intent. As a viewer, I prefer to get so swept up in a story that such considerations only sneak into my consciousness indirectly. If I only notice them when I think back on it later—the sweet spot for that being in the few minutes after I’ve first finished the episode—then it feels like the writer has done their job.

But this series…

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