Doctor Who

[Faulkner]

[Faulkner]

Interesting to see what happens to BBCA after this. Doctor Who has been the main thing keeping that channel relevant with viewers, especially with Killing Eve and Orphan Black both gone:

 

[DAMfan]

My ❤ Ian returned

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[Vee]

BBCA was terrible for Doctor Who - they would literally speed up the episodes' runtime onscreen to fit more room for kludged-in American ads. I stopped bothering with them long ago. And the farce of putting the current show on an AMC streaming service no one uses (AMC+) and the past series on HBO Max was ridiculous.

I knew RTD/Bad Wolf would be smart enough to consolidate the streaming platforms for the shows into something simpler and convenient, and I'm glad it's finally happened. I also love the new/retro logo.

 

[Vee]

A pretty good BTS special, with some lovely stuff for Sacha Dhawan (among others) in here as well.

A 

[Vee]

@DRW50I'd never noticed this before (timestamped below), from the Series 8 finale. Apparently they did this after the cold open where Clara poses as the Doctor to fool the Cybermen - and to highlight the growing symbiosis between Clara and the Doctor. Those are her eyes, not Capaldi's.

 

Edited October 27, 2022 by Vee

[DRW50]

That's a great find, @Vee . I was so checked out by that point I never would have noticed.

[Vee]

I thought you loved that first Capaldi season! Ah well.

Apparently The Power of the Doctor was first written by Chibnall thinking he'd done a JNT and that the show might be gone for years and wrote it accordingly as a kind of finale, a la Survival at the end of the McCoy run (where I think they re-dubbed the end dialogue with a V.O. by Sylvester to give some kind of sendoff) - it wasn't til late in the game they learned RTD was back. Somehow I'm not surprised Chibnall very nearly took us back to the wilderness years.

Edited October 27, 2022 by Vee

[DRW50]

I don't loving it that much, mainly due  to the story with Clara and the teacher boyfriend, but it did have its moments. 

[Vee]

 

[Vee]

Speaking of Bonnie Langford, another great short from the Blu-Ray range:

 

@DRW50will enjoy the revisit to Paradise Towers.

[DRW50]

@Vee Thanks for finding that. Genuinely very lovely to see Sylvester and Bonnie together again. For many years, as I'm sure you remember too, there was a certain idea of what a dud Mel was, how all she did was shriek, and that nothing improved until the arrival of Ace. I'm glad Big Finish and the passage of time have helped  to shake some of that off, and I hope have led to more appreciate of that era (Delta and the Bannermen in particular I think holds up, and of course Paradise Towers is a very unique gem, a mix of sheer campery and black death). 

[Vee]

I'll admit I have to give Series 24 a fair reappraisal. I think people just really like Bonnie Langford tbh, more now than back then. I always liked her though, stories aside.

[Vee]

All official tweets are now using the new/retro Who logo introduced the other day for the RTD2 era.

[Vee]

Some thoughts on Power of the Doctor:

Janet Fielding's Australian accent has gotten better, but the kooky intensity of her performance remains and is totally charming (the way she gets very arch, as Tegan would, when she finally mentions the Doctor in her first scene is a hoot). Just lovely to see her. I expected to see Ace someday because of many attempts in the past, but with Tegan I was never totally sure we would. They both still have it and it was thrilling to see both their names in the opening credits. The anchor of Tegan's angst over the Doctor ghosting her for 38 years was appropriate given the difficult nature of their relationship - I thought Thirteen/Whittaker gave a bit more weight to seeing her again - and Sophie and Janet were wonderful together. Janet's monologue to Kate Stewart was sweet and funny, as was her snippily forcing her way into the TARDIS and intimidating Thirteen near the end (along with that ridiculous CGI run out of a gigantic building explosion), and I do buy that Tegan's done and seen it all. I really hope we get to see her back again, because Tegan was a big part of the emotional heart of this for me and if for nothing else she must be seen by longtime fans. I wouldn't have minded seeing much more of Janet Fielding with Jodie Whittaker's cheery Doctor; these two women who are very different while also recalling the Davison era would be an interesting contrast. Not having a few return outings with Tegan before this point, like Lis Sladen's returns as Sarah Jane, seems like a wasted opportunity for both characters.

Sophie's voice upon seeing the Doctor brought it all flooding back for me like it was yesterday, and Ace breaking out her jacket and kit and Sophie's obvious delight over the whole thing made her seem even more ageless. She inhabited Ace effortlessly. You get the sense that Ace has been Tegan's slightly younger daredevil friend and pick-me-up for a number of years now, keeping her more spiky and pessimistic pal's spirits aloft; it's a cute friendship I'd like to see more of. Bring on the fic!

Tegan: You carry that bat with you all the time?

Ace: Beyonce copied all my moves.

Jodie Whittaker looks more weathered to me somehow in this episode - a beautiful woman still in the prime of her life, but less prone to gurning and grinning which is really all Chibnall has given her (or Sacha Dhawan) to work with in three series. There is a weight and melancholy to her performance here, the giddy generic Doctor is a bit less in residence. You look at the woman in her opening year and the one here and, similarly to Tom Baker's final year, the presence is different in Whittaker's last special at least. I loved how she somewhat coldly sees Dan off (a character who, like Ryan, basically came to very little but 'spare male figure in TARDIS') early on with not even a word of goodbye after accepting his exit, just a look of wan acknowledgement as she closes the door on him and Yaz. Tell me the last time that's happened with any companion's exit.

The now-old story of 'new companion sees old ones have been ghosted' plays again here with Yaz, and Mandip Gill does a fine job throughout even if I still don't think much of Yaz as a three-dimensional character and never have. The actress' charisma is all that's keeping her afloat at this point. The very, very latecoming subplot of 'Yaz crushes on the Doctor/does the Doctor want her back?' was slapped together at the literal last minute in the last two specials, seemingly with Chibnall and co. responding to fan theory without having written much of anything to set it up for years, and it doesn't play for me but Gill sells her deep feelings here and is very solid in this ep. In fairness to TPTB, at the end of the Sea Devils special they sort of put a bow on it, with the Doctor outright talking to Yaz about the issue and telling her she can't be with her, and Yaz seeming to accept it. That is more explicit, mature and open about things than the Doctors and Rose were together in their day, so that's something at least. And the writers have nothing at all to say about a romance angle in this episode, which shows how poorly thrown in it was previously.

I'll admit that Sacha Dhawan has at times been too much forced ham for me as the Master, despite my loving him in An Adventure in Space and Time, the original Utopia and other things; he's a talented actor but it seemed in the past as though he invested in a lot of tics and histrionics to make up for the thin writing and was simply instructed to do the Joker, and given little other depth of character (especially as the Master's reversion to pure villainy post-Missy has never been explained). No one has come close to what Michelle Gomez did with the Master/Missy, but I'm pleased Dhawan was much better this time. This special is easily his finest outing, funny and smart, and makes me want to see him return with better writing in future instead of another regeneration - we don't see him definitively die or regenerate, and Dhawan has apparently talked about wanting to come back. I assume RTD will recast again as is tradition, but I wouldn't mind being surprised. The Master hitting on one of the male guards was a riot; you can see Dhawan do it in the wide shot as he's being carted down the corridor at UNIT and following up with "bunk up in the bunker!"

The Master: Oh, Tegan Jovanka! How's your Auntie Vanessa? Do you keep her in a little doll's house?

Tegan: I'm going to enjoy watching you locked up in a tiny cell.

The Master: That's right, you tell me! And Ace! Or should I say Dorothy. Didn't the Doctor ditch you? Little fallout with your Machiavellian maestro?

Ace: Last time I saw you, you were half-cat!

The Master: A man's allowed to experiment.

"The Master's Dalek Plan" is a great gag, and the "Rasputin" musical montage was a fun nod to The Sound of Drums and "Voodoo Child". There's several smart nods to past finale/regeneration stories in this one actually - the emergency hologram/AI bit is a nice throwback to the first modern Who finale in Parting of the Ways and Rose seeing the Ninth Doctor's emergency hologram, now tailored today to Yaz, Tegan and Ace with their own Doctors. There's another great nod with all the companions together in the TARDIS piloting it  at the end too, which is right out of Series 4 and Journey's End. But the whole Master bodyswap/regeneration thing was bizarre and superficial to me, I don't understand it at all. The Master has been heavily regressed overall as a character in this era and it just seemed beneath him at this point, even if a part of him does desire to be the Doctor deep down. I did love him playing the Second Doctor's recorder at least.

Jemma Redgrave is always welcome back as Kate, I've always loved her - I need to watch her on Criterion these next couple days in Dream Demon, an old '80s horror flick she did with Kathleen Wilhoite and Timothy Spall. She was great facing off with that Cyberman hybrid character I still don't care about, but I did wonder if they'd bring up her father's fate in Moffat's Series 8 finale as she went off to face hers (almost). I expected her to get revenge for the Brigadier. I hope RTD doesn't discard Kate and UNIT, as UNIT has been much more prominent and sympathetically portrayed since his original exit.

Word has it that Jacob Anderson's return as Vinder was a last minute substitute for the sadly persona non grata John Barrowman as Captain Jack. I can't fault the show for that given Barrowman's attitude about his long-ago behavior, an attitude and approach which has led him to getting sacked from almost every major gig he had, but I admit I hope he can return someday if he stops making an ass of himself. Either way, as always with Chibnall in these big events there's too many supporting characters and too much going on - Anderson is very handsome and charismatic but I don't see the point of him being here. Same with Graham though I always loved Bradley Walsh, the strongest of a bad lot of characters in this era. He had real chemistry with Sophie Aldred too, and I wouldn't be surprised at all to see Ace and Graham mentioned as being romantically linked in the future.

The Cybermen - what can I say. Steven Moffat struggled to make the Cybermen scary again after they'd become blundering tin goons for most of their appearances in the last 50 years, first by trying a few haunted house tricks with them in his first Series 5 finale (The Pandorica Opens) and then by finally bringing back the original '60s cloth-masked "Mondasian Cybermen" near the end of his tenure, Cybermen which had a much more spooky appearance than the modern incarnation. His stories with them had their peaks and valleys, but they were better than the RTD cartoon versions and better than the Cybermen we've suffered through in the Chibnall era. Their big plan this time seemed also to be a lazy riff on the not-very-good Series 2 finale, their siege of UNIT being reminiscent of when they did much the same thing to Torchwood One and poor old Tracy Ann Oberman from Eastenders. UNIT also seemed extremely empty, which I assume was down to COVID filming but made things look unexpectedly cheap and low-budget at points. Mostly this made me want to rewatch Moffat's Cyberman stories, or even Army of Ghosts/Doomsday, and compare. No comment on the very perfunctory role of the Daleks, who need an equally long break as the Cybermen. So the whole actual plot of this episode, not super-thrilling but reasonably diverting.

The cameos - the segment with the classic Doctors (minus Tom of course, but we'll see about next year) as the 'guardians of the edge' was great. David Bradley has always done such a wonderful job as the First Doctor in the Moffat era in addition to his turn as Hartnell himself in AAISAT. Seeing McGann back again is always a thrill and he really does deserve a TV special or two; I loved the return of his classic outfit and his banter back and forth with Seven. Peter Davison and Colin Baker especially getting to reprise the role again still had such weight. The Jo Martin/Fugitive Doctor cameo was a bit gratuitous, but she's so good in the role - stealing a lot of the show out from under Whittaker - that I didn't care.

The dual reunions with Davison/Fielding and McCoy/Aldred were especially touching. Yes, it's fan service but I bought it in the plot (though how the Doctor's AI knew to beam itself to them so quickly I've no idea) as I would in any big celebratory episode blowout like this, including the moments many have commented on where both Doctors inexplicably turn solid and real for a single line of dialogue. Some have speculated that Seven and Ace fell out over some stuff from the New Adventures novel range, which wouldn't surprise me but they don't make it explicit. Either way, with both duos it was like no time had passed; they each still have such chemistry and Davison and McCoy step perfectly back into their roles. I loved the tenderness with Five and Tegan, which was sometimes rare for them.

Not giving the companions in the TARDIS an actual goodbye with the Doctor was another example of poor planning and structure by Chibnall - 'oh, I took them home.' And the meeting of the past companions could've been a bit longer, but by that point Chibnall had so overstuffed the episode with plot and too many supporting characters that I'm thrilled we got what little we did, especially the very brief moments with Ian and Mel. I also actually really liked how they handled the regeneration reveal - Thirteen/Whittaker is bummed about it, but sucks it up very quickly, calmly reminds Yaz what is going to happen and sort of holds her hand through it with no gnashing of teeth or anguish (and I loved Mandip Gill's stiff upper lip silent crying through that, trying to put on a brave face so they can both do what they need to). I can't remember the last Doctor - maybe Matt Smith's - who was more sanguine about it. There's a gender critique in that somewhere. What little unique character Thirteen has reminds me a great deal of a teacher for children, and she handled Yaz kindly but firmly in that sequence. Her actual regeneration was also appropriate to her, all sunshine and optimism, only regretting she couldn't see what was next. I just wish we could've seen a more fleshed-out and nuanced version of this kind of unexpectedly mature young/old Doctor under different writers.

I've only tolerated the Chris Chibnall era at best, and I think Jodie Whittaker and everyone else involved were very poorly served by a long run of mediocrity and very bad plotting. This special does not change that. The plot was overstuffed and old hat, the core characters from the Chibnall era were very thin. But it was overall a fun romp for longtime fans with a lot of classic characters and I've seen far worse final stories frankly. I enjoyed it for what it was.

I will always look on this era as almost a sort of miniature return to the 'wilderness years' for the show, an echo of the troubled mid-'80s, and tbh it almost was back to the void. You can tell there's a real finality in the ending where Yaz is at peace about things, knowing 'she'll be okay, she's the Doctor' and Thirteen facing regeneration with joy; supposedly Chibnall thought it might be the end and wrote it accordingly before knowing about RTD coming back. The Chibnall regime is as close as we've come to DW going back into the wilderness again in many years and I am mostly just glad it's over, and very optimistic about RTD2 and Ncuti Gatwa. And seeing Catherine Tate and David Tennant again next year, of course. I'm ready for Doctor Who to come back with a vengeance and for my investment in it to do the same.