Alright, huh. So that was interesting. Was this season good? Yes. It didn’t have amazing episodes but none (except for Orphan 55) were anywhere close to bad. In fact there were a lot of things that got me really engaged. Right up until the big revelation in the finale that I’m... not a big fan of right now. On the other hand it’s not the worst. I don’t know, let’s get back to that.
I’ve already reviewed the early episodes of the series: Spyfall Parts 1 and 2, Orphan 55, and Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror, but all of the other episodes were pretty good. This is the kind of season that’s going to be impossible to talk about without talking about spoilers but suffice to say the second half of the season has about the same quality as the first half. I still maintain that Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror is the best episode of the season but the other filler episodes are harmless enough and are still very engaging. Then there are the episodes that push the story forward and these are all pretty good. The writing can be all over the place but the twists and turns of those stories are often enough to compensate. Ascension of the Cybermen especially was really exciting stuff and got me really excited for the finale. Then after some massive reveals lore-changing reveals in the finale and a cliffhanger unlike any series closer in the show’s almost 60 year history and you’ve got a pretty solid season. Whether or not you come away from the season liking it or not will depend on your opinion of the major twist in the finale, but I think that I can fairly say that this was a pretty great season of television all things considered. Not an outstanding one, but it’s definitely more than just good.
I’m going to put the rating here now because I’ll be talking about spoilers below.
Personal Rating: 8/10
Entertainment: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆
Depth: ⭐️⭐️ ☆ ☆ ☆
Story: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆
Comedy: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆ ☆
Tension: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆
Acting: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆
Directing: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆
Alright, spoiler time. DO NOT READ IF YOU DON’T WANT THE SEASON TO BE SPOILED
I won’t start with the big twist here so we’ll start with episode 5, Fugitive of the Judoon.
I thought that despite the fact that the writing often felt kinda horrid, and the acting from the supporting cast left a lot to be desired (seriously, I don’t get why people love Jo Martin so much, she was fine, but she wasn’t great). However JACK HARKNESS IS FRICKING BACK!!! I don’t think it was possible to not be excited in that moment and it feels so good to have John Barrowman back, I wish that he was a larger part of the series other than a glorified exposition dump of a cameo, but hey, I’ll take what I can get. The other turn in the episode worked less well in my opinion, the reveal that Jo Martin was actually some other iteration of the Doctor was an interesting one, but one that felt like a very easy reveal to make and one that didn’t feel like it could really pay off well (which it didn’t really, but we’ll get to that). However, I was intrigued as to how it would work out even if I wasn’t excited at the prospect of this person being the Doctor (I just don’t think she was that engaging).
Then there are two very filler-y episodes with the exception of Can You Hear Me?’s rather pointless name-drop of the timeless child again just to get us ready for the finale and then we have The Haunting of Villa Diodati which was set up as filler but ended up being very crucial to the plot. Ignoring the episode’s wanting dialogue, it was a pretty great episode. It created the fantastic villain Ashad or The Lone Cyberman, who was a very effective Cyberman villain that actually made them pretty terrifying again. The Cyberium was a fine enough plot device and the Doctor sacrificing the Cyberium, starting a second Cyber War, to save one man was a pretty effective way to get us into the finale, even if the episode botched it a bit with the Doctor seemingly sacrificing the Cyberium twice for no apparent reason and the writers cramming in a weird monologue about how important writers are (which is especially weird because the important writer that it’s talking about is Percy Shelley when the more important Mary Shelley was right there for the writers to use). This episode neatly transitioned into Ascension of the Cybermen which was pretty short on reveals (and a bit on writing quality too (I promise that’s the last knock on writing (I should add a writing score to my reviews))) but was otherwise pretty fantastic and I was very excited for the finale.
And then there’s The Timeless Children, which isn’t a bad episode, in fact, it’s quite good, however the reveal that they cram into it is, well I don’t like it. I’m assuming that if you’ve read this far you know that it reveals that the Doctor is actually not Gallifreyan but some other entity that can regenerate indefinitely and gave the Time-Lords their regeneration ability. Which, on the one hand, I do kinda like the idea of the Doctor’s background being even more mysterious, not only do we not know what happened to them as a little First Doctor child on Gallifrey, but we also don’t know what they are or where they came from. However, I’m still not sure how I feel about them being this super important being. I think I like the reveal more than most people, and it is growing on me. We’ll just have to see how the next season turns out. However, everything else in the episode was solid enough. The Master is great, the Lone Cyberman is great, the companions are there and all that. And that cliffhanger is pretty cool. I would love to see a Doctor Who jailbreak.
Writing: ⭐️⭐️ ☆ ☆ ☆
No comments:
Post a Comment