Haven’t seen a discussion post for the new special, so I’ll get the ball rolling. Thoughts, insights, bits you loved… let it all out.
Loved it. It was fun, cheesy at times, but also down to earth where it mattered. Also a big fan of RTD giving a big middle finger to everyone who complained about Jodie’s era being too “woke.” I find it kinda funny that RTD did more with a female doctor in one episode than Chibnal did in 3 years, and he didn’t even have a female doctor.
Only complaint is the resolution to the metacrisis where they just get rid of it. Feels a bit hand-wavy and also the one thing in the episode that I felt was a bit preachy. Loved the stuff before it though, with Rose inheriting it.
Of course it was hand-wavey. It’s RTD’s Doctor Who. :)
Chalk it up to the DoctorDonna needing fifteen years or so to finish the calculation that would solve her problem, which it turns out needed two processors running in parallel.
RTD is back!
- news broadcasts? check
- spaceships crashing? check
- big green rubbery aliens? check
- the sonic being just completely absurd space magic? check
- companions actually having real family members instead of cardboard cutouts? check
- extreme cheesiness gives way to genuinely touching moments? check
- deus ex machina ending that also has the Doctor hitting loads of switches and buttons? check
I don’t know if it’s just nostalgia for old NuWho, but it was really enjoyable after the so-so slog of Chibnall’s seasons.
Here’s hoping one of the three episodes is something in the vein of “Midnight”, RTD’s best single episode IMO.
As someone else wrote somewhere… RTD’s back, which means the carnival’s back in town. Lots of running about, flashing lights, loud music, a stunt show with exploding things and people shooting at each other, and comedy hi jinks.
I liked the small things - the time vortex having open areas with multiple paths from 13, the helping/oh-shit-nope-not-helping with the stacking, the psychic paper not keeping up, ‘she’s fine/she’s not fine/been fine’, Sylvia’s “YOU!”, Donna’s ‘WHAT THE HELL!’, the ‘you can’t know your future conversation’ up until they mentioned (again) that Donna dies if she remembers. Didn’t mind the parademons, like the idea of the Sonic having a UI (but hated the shields), loved The Meep even after they got sidelined for the big ending. Console room was kinda meh still, big and bland atm.
I have a feeling the episode was scripted and shot, then they decided on the introduction to catch us all up, hence the doubling-up. Could be wrong, though.
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After a second watch, I really started to like Rose’s backstory especially since Time Lords can be considered non binary.
My only qualm is it felt a bit rushed, it’s too bad there wasn’t a way to slowly eldlude to why Rose is the way the are. It all got thrown at us in 30 seconds at the end of the episode.
I loved it, personally! David Tennant and Catherine Tate felt like they’d been away for a month or two rather than 15 years, and it’s so nice for Doctor Who to just be fun and funny again.
I know some people didn’t like the “let it go” resolution, but also that’s just Russell T. Davies I think. You get utterly bonkers ideas (Beep The Meep on primetime TV as a big comeback monster!) a political point of view that he’s not afraid to completely smash you over the head with, and an out-of-nowhere hand-wavy resolution that fixes everything (remember when the Doctor became flying space Jesus and then they erased the human race getting genocided back in the day?)
Also I loved the conversation in the cab:
“How’s Nerys?”
“She’s fine.”
“Since the accident?”
“She’s not fine.”
“It was her fault.”
“She’s been fined.”
ALSO I really like the new TARDIS interior. Someone on another site described Tennant running around it as like a dog with the zoomies lol.
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The Doctor has long been about inclusivity and it’s nice to see it addressed and managed like only Who can.
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I was howling after that car conversation!
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And the new TARDIS has a coffee maker! Totally making a Janeway meme about that one.
There’s coffee in that TARDIS.
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It was alright but I didn’t enjoy it as much as others seem to have done. Everything was so obvious. Donna tells her daughter that she will protect her so you know this will come in play later. The coffee thing was mentioned and I immediately knew she’ll spill it. The way the “why Donna didn’t die” was a bit resolved in a weird way, she is a woman so she can “let go” and give birth, which is so weird that the Doctor didn’t think about this (he literally was a woman just before). Ultimately it doesn’t make sense, someone passes a disease to their kid it doesn’t mean that the disease is now weaker. That’s not how inherited illnesses work. I love that there’s a trans character but everything about her is just them saying that she is trans, I wanna know more about her and not just her sexuality. It was handled good in the conversation between Donna and her mother but then it went a bit overboard for my taste.
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This is nonsense, and you only think this is the case because you were focusing on it so hard. Before we knew anything about her we saw that she was a bright, attractive, and canny kid who was interested in everything. Then we saw her shed and learned she made little stuffed creatures to sell for extra spending money, and we see she wants to help this weird creature rather than panicking and running as most people might. Later Donna says she does acting in the drama club but isn’t very good at it. That’s more than we learn about most secondary characters in a single episode.
I don’t know you, so I don’t know what your experience is and won’t even venture to guess, but I can say from my own personal experience that people with trans or otherwise queer kids talk about it, especially with other parents. And it is sometimes quite a challenge for some, especially for older relatives to “get it”, even when they want to do right by their family member.
No, it’s not the only thing about Rose, but it is an important thing, especially when vast squelching chunks of society would rather not even acknowledge nonbinary and transgender people even exist. And I’m glad they were up front about it, rather than drawing it out and trying to be coy to the point of wanting to have it both ways.
Nah I agree with him. I missed it a but at first because I was only paying half attention but the whole “did you just assume the meeps pronouns” bit and the ending non binary stuff was very forced and clumsy and just distracting.
And I say that as the the stereotypical pink haired non binary gay feminist. Inclusion should be normalising making it a big deal and metaphorically winking down the camera does as much harm as good.
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well it’s not an inherited illness but yeah, the whole thing was “a human brain can’t handle that much dumped into it” which is why she had to forget. Processor overload.
Yea I used illness as an analogy. Passing something down to your child doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll get weaker. But even when accepting this, I find the resolution unsatisfactory.
I fully understand yoir point of view, but could it also be because their minds are linked, at least in some way, so thay instead of being focused on just one there’s two sharing the load, like, how a single core CPU could run something, but if you start doubling the cores, it makes it easier. Maybe if Rose had a child as well, that’d make it easier as well.
The metacrisis isn’t an illness, it’s is made-up space magic. RTD can put whatever rules he wants onto it. It makes a sort of sense (in a wibbly-wobbly sort of way) that a child would act as a sort of pressure release.
Them “letting it go” at the end was a bit of a silly copout, but I chalk it up to the DoctorDonna (and DoctorRose?) having capabilities the Doctor couldn’t fathom alone. She/they just needed fifteen years or so to ruminate on it, like a complex calculation that takes years to compute.
That console room needs furniture! It’s just a bunch of ramps and catwalks that don’t seem to go anywhere. Hopefully Donna can give it more of a homey touch - some nice lamps and wallhangings, maybe.
After that spill, at least a coffee table.
It would be nice if there would stack up souveniers from the adventures or whatevee the protagonists go through. But I really love the like curvy, nonlinear crosswalks.
Wife and I loved this episode, just so great. Hate that Jodie didn’t have writers and stories as great as this. My wife did find a bit of a plot hole though. This story takes 15 years later right? Donna got married 15 years ago, assuming she got married not long after the meta crisis. So Rose should be 13 or 14 at the oldest. Rose clearly is in her late teens.
I really enjoyed the episode for what it was. It served as a decent introduction for the Disney+ crowd without being too convoluted. Which given this was a continuation of a 15 year old plot thread was handled about as well as it could be.
My biggest complaint was how integrated Rose was into the resolution to the metacrisis. I am not trans and don’t pretend to know even a fraction of the struggles they face in our society. The normalisation of Rose throughout the episode and an acknowledgement of how even very well meaning family work to be inclusive felt very natural. However, I did not like how her being trans seemed to have been caused by the metacrisis. It felt like it flew in the face of the normalisation. The reading in the episode is Rose is only trans because of that timelord DNA influence. It felt wrong to reduce her character to being nothing more than a quirk of fate rather than just who she is naturally.
I’d have preferred a ‘Lets all hold hands and the family shares the burden’ hand waving than what we got. Rose deserved more than what we got and certainly more screen time. It was quite weird the rest of the family didn’t go see Wilf. I get they were setting up episode 2, but in the context of the moment it felt really out of character for MumDonna.
To those confused about how Donna and Rose were able to ‘Let it go’ now rather than back then, Frozen wasn’t released until 4 years later so it musn’t have occurred to the Doctor… In all seriousness, I’d point to the scene from The Day of the Doctor where Clara opens the unlocked door for the ‘clever’ Doctors. Sometimes he’ll look for the best solution without realising a simple one is in front of him.
The new TARDIS interior was gorgeous, harkens back to the Hartnell console room. I loved the first thing 13 did was start running around. So much room to practise running haha.
All in all, a solid.episode with some flaws. I really liked the new style and you could feel that new budget while still having a Dr. Who charm aliens that looked like they’d been handmade. I’d put it around a 7.5/8 out of 10. Good foundation, interested to see if it is built on. It definitely makes me excited for Ncuti’s run.
her being trans seemed to have been caused by the metacrisis. It felt like it flew in the face of the normalisation. The reading in the episode is Rose is only trans because of that timelord DNA influence.
I didn’t get that at all from the episode. Where are you getting that from?
Rose is trans because that’s who she is. The metacrisis was a part of her up until she and Donna released it - which they couldn’t do while Donna was still psychic locked. And afterward she was basically the same, only without that metacrisis energy, which didn’t change who she was, it only had subtle subliminal influences that manifested in her stuffed creatures and maybe nudged her in tiny ways, but didn’t overtake her.
However, I did not like how her being trans seemed to have been caused by the metacrisis. It felt like it flew in the face of the normalisation.
I get that reading of it, but I think her “I finally feel like me” line after releasing the meta-crisis was more an acknowledgment of finally being able to let go of the 10th doctor’s maleness, not that the meta-crisis made her trans.
Thought this was delightful. So glad to be watching again after taking the last few seasons off.
