Doctor Who 1.5 "73 Yards"

As if to wash the sugary taste of the early episodes of the series away, this week's installment of Doctor Who, "73 Yards", is perhaps the best of the year, featuring a truly creepy enemy that makes the Weeping Angels look like Hello Kitty. This might be a bit too much for the young ones, so viewer beware.

Soon after landing on a clifftop in Wales, Ruby loses track of the Doctor and finds herself wandering through the landscape, looking for him....and waiting. Years and years of waiting. She also finds herself perpetually followed by a mysterious figure, who for some reason is always 73 yards away from her...no more, no less, so she cannot approach her without her moving. Any help she enlists to send to the woman to ask her why she is doing this (random townspeople, Kate Lethbridge-Stewart in a surprising cameo) run away in terror when the woman whispers something in their ear. 

We see Ruby begin to live an entire alternate life as she waits for the Doctor to return, aging from 25 to 30 to 80 and beyond. For her entire life, she is haunted and stalked by this figure. Her friends try to convince (gaslight) her that she is imagining the whole thing. But clearly, she is not. 

The Doctor is gone for the majority of the episode, leaving Ruby to figure out the mystery on her own. When she does finally connect the pieces the resolution is solid and satisfying, despite leaving many details up to the viewer to decide. We see a whole new side to Ruby whose character is fleshed out here, making her seem like her own person rather than simply an amalgam of Clara, Rose and Amy. 

This fits right in the "Doctor-lite" type of episode we tend to get at least once a season. Fortunately, these types of episodes are always classics ("Turn Left", "The Girl Who Waited") and this is as good if not better than any of the previous ones. The complete opposite of the paper thin, watered-down slapstick of the season premiere, and is a thoroughly gripping, well-written hour with an amazing central performance and an ending that actually makes sense without needing to be timey-wimey. My grade: a solid A+. 

Doctor Who review: 1.4 "BOOM"

 

After the backlash against the supposed "wokeness" of the first two episodes, Doctor Who finally delivers a tense and old-fashioned bottle style episode focusing on the two main characters in one main set. The forced humor is gone and the Doctor shows his serious side as he faces the possibility of death for real. The whole episode actually functions quite well as a metaphor for death and loss. 

Shortly after the TARDIS arrives on a war-torn planet, the Doctor accidentally steps on a landmine, starting the activation process that will explode it, however, he doesn't set his second foot down, delaying the detonation while the landmine tech searches for a complete target body. The Doctor spends the majority of the episode balancing on the landmine, desperate to keep it from detonating, while also being forced to find a solution to the war destroying the planet. 

Companion Ruby gets some character development here as we see how unafraid she is to save the Doctor even though she realizes she may very well be killed. She is shaping up to be as fearless as any classic companion like Leela or Sara Jane. The Doctor shows us his Zen Master technique, slowing his pulse and temperature to keep the bomb from igniting. Ncuti Gatwa puts on a master class of acting here, with the Doctor desperately trying to fight for his life. See? Real stakes, not some nonsense about space babies and booger monsters. 

The creepy medical robots (SPOILER) which turn out to be the real villains, are suitably upsetting, murderous tanks with a grandmotherly face plastered on. And the resolution of the story is actually quite clever and thought-out, unlike the weak resolution of the last couple of episodes. Fifteen's happy speech at the end is actually deserved and moving. Please keep the new episodes like this! This one's a classic. My Rating: A-

Doctor Who is back with a one-two punch! But, is it any good? (Part 2)

Unlike the lackluster first episode, the second bolts right out of the gate with the Tardis crew going to swinging London in 1963 to visit the Beatles first recording sessions, which even the Doctor is surprised he's never done before. But the sessions are not what they seem, because a chaotic monster that feeds on music has taken over, dooming humanity to extinction. As the show theorizes, a race without music grows sour and frustrated, turning to war as the only outlet for their emotions. I got a little echo of classic Who in the scene where the Doctor shows Ruby the wasteland that the world will become if the Maestro is allowed to win echoes the scene in Pyramids of Mars where the 4th Doctor does the same for Sara in showing her a possible future if the evil Sutekh is allowed to live.

The Maestro herself (Jinx Monsoon) is wonderful, all high-strung energy and vicious jokes, a real, solid villain the show has been unable to produce in its last few years. The scenes with her crawling out of pianos are weirdly disturbing and probably will freak out quite a few younger viewers. That's what the sofa is for kids, so you can hide behind it. 

It is disappointing that in an episode featuring the Beatles, they only appear on screen for a few minutes, the bulk of the story given over to the Doctor/Maestro battle. But hey, John and Paul end up saving the day, so that's alright then. What isn't so alright is the forced musical number inserted at the very end of the episode, which I utterly loathed. I mean, I get why it's there, but I still hated every second of it. It was like I was suddenly watching "High School Musical" or something.

The Doctor and Ruby's relationship deepens somewhat in this episode, and they are already settling in as a classic team up. What isn't settling in as much is the new glossy exterior of the show and different style (we are firmly in fantasy territory here, not sci-fi) but those will probably grow on me eventually. The Doctor reacts well when confronted with something he doesn't understand, hope to see more of that explored in the future, and the hint of seeing the rest of the Toymaker's "legions" is promising. Just no more musical numbers, please. My Grade: B+

Doctor Who is back with a one-two punch! But...is it any good? (Part 1)

 

After a winter break, The Fifteenth Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) is back for further adventures with new companion Ruby Sunday, who on the basis of these two new episodes, much more important than she lets on to be, similar to a Donna Noble or a Clara Oswald. But more interesting is the soft reboot provided by the hand of Disney, who is now the American distributor of the program....this is not your grandpa's Doctor Who. This is not even your dad's Doctor Who. This is a whole new shiny beast. 

The premiere episode, "Space Babies", is a shaky start. The first five minutes or so are an encapsulated discussion of the last 60 years of the show, simplified and dissected so the brand-new Disney viewers won't get sucked into the series long and often contradictory history. All you need to know is this is the Doctor, some bad shit happened to him, but now he's better, and he's here to have some fun!

The main premise of the episode, a space station manned by babies after their parents were forced to leave, is pretty ridiculous, but it is amazing to watch the babies zip around in their computerized strollers like little Daleks. It becomes clear that this series is tired of timey-wimey explanations for itself and is moving from science fiction into fantasy. Which is fine as a stylistic choice but jarring if you're still holding out hope for the old style Doctor explanations for everything. In both these new episodes, the Doctor freely admits he has no idea what is happening but is curious to find out. 

Not much happens in this first outing, there is a lot of exposition and place setting for elements that will come back later in the season (Ruby's powers, Ruby's mother, The Toymaker's "legions") but there's very little at stake here. There is no villain per se, and the crisis is averted relatively quickly. Poor Ruby doesn't get to do much other than gawk in surprise and get a bucket of snot dumped on her. No, really. 

The saving grace here is the Fifteenth Doctor himself, who is solid magic and lights up the screen with his very presence. Even he manages to make the weird-looking new Sonic Screwdriver look cool. And you can't help but wonder the playlist he has on the new Tardis jukebox. He's just effortlessly charismatic, which helps elevate a very silly script. 

"Space Babies" isn't a great episode, it's a necessary precursor to the rest of the season. But viewed on it's own...it's just another episode. My grade: C+