So, episode 2... If an episode with this premise had come up in Capaldi's run, his Doctor likely would've gone on a rant stating that the Sontarans aren't even remotely important. Because they're not. They're not in any way connected to the main plot, the Flux or the main two baddies. They're just a stock enemy who decided to take advantage of the situation. It's almost a filler episode. It is good and realistic that even in the worst of times there will be bad people who take advantage of a bad situation, but it does distract from the more important story. And outside of the ending, we've not moved forward in the main plot much. When the episode started subtitles didn't work and with the accents of the actors and the background music pretty much on the foregrond, I sometimes found it difficult to understand what anybody was saying. Would it have made difference? Probably not, because when thinking about it afterwards, there sure were a lot of plotholes in it and elements that are just plain dumb. Things that sound good in a first draft, but needed a few more redactional reviews before being finalised. (My girlfriend started asking plot question as soon as the episode ended, things she didn't understand. This is always a clear sign that it really doesn't make sense. That things don't work as the writer intended.) The only really interesting element of the story was where the story ended, on the planet Time. So hopefully we finally are going somewhere next week. (Hm, and I was thinking that the design of that structure with those people that was broken, looked a bit like the design of Jodie's Tardis. At first I even thought it was the Tardis.) On the plus side, Jodie her Doctor really gets to be the focus of the story. Unlike the previous two season where the three companions and the guest characters all vied for time, here it's pretty much her as the central character. I do question her endangering a known historical figure by letting her keeping watch on a Sontaran base/army. But she felt more like the Doctor in this episode than in most (if not all) of season 11 and 12.
Guess RTD is only going to have one season to up the ratings again or Who might actually be done again.
I have no desire to watch this season, I'm betting they plan on doubling down on the timeless child storyline from last season and it will be even more of a train wreck.
Maybe after this they will wipe the slate clean for a full on reboot - not just another regeneration of the Doctor but the whole universe will be given a blank slate.
Episode 3 of FLux....and what the hell did I watch?!?! I know I'm not the smartest person in the world and I regurlarly encounter reviews and analysis that make clear to me that I missed a whole lot of story elements and referances (continuity or literature), but either this was a simple story told in an incredibly stupid and convuouted way...or it was way beyond me. What I think happened was Spoiler that since they all jumped in the disrupted time stream, the Doctor in an attempt to keep the others save, threw them in their own timeline: their past, the present and a possible future. Except in two of those, Yaz and Dan, there were disruptions due to the damage to Time -- but apparently not in the third, Vinder. Meanwhile, the Doctor relives the mission in which the Ruth Doctor confronted and beat Swarm and Azure leading to their imprisonment. Beat in a very dumb way that runs counter to what Swarm said earlier, about them having fought battles and being each other's archenemies, but at the same time in a very doctor-y manner. However, despite Swarm having stated that he remembers every fight they had and that having been their final, the Doctor uses an alteration of the same trick with which she beat them in the past, to beat them again. And there's a little thing about the Flux being in some way the Doctor's fault. Did I miss something? Was there more to it? Or was it a simple story told in a very messy? I do think it's an ambitious story. But time travel stories in which the true elements of time travel play a part, are so incredibly difficult. Rarely is it done right and there's always the risk of it ending up being a confusing mess. Chibnall just isn't the kind of writer who can pull it off. (I also don't think RtD could, but fortunately in most of his episodes time travel was limited to getting somewhere, and Moffatt only got it when at his peak; Chibnall is not in their league.) Any way, in contrast to what I hoped with the ending of the previous episode, I don't think we progressed much in the story. We still have three parts to go, but with the next episode being an Angel episode, I fear it again will do little to really progress the story. To be honest, I'm getting the impression that these first three episodes are salvaged scripts. Scripts written for a regular season of mostly standalone episodes, and now altered to make them part of a six parter, with some overarching plot elements hastily added. And to be brutal, I think either Chibnall is saying to hell with it, I'm doing whatever I want, or this whole stoyline is a huge error showing why he's unsuitable to be showrunner. Because the ratings have been dropping showing a disinterest from casual viewers, and if any casual viewer turned in or had the television set still on, they likely stopped watching during this. I expect a further plummet of the ratings.
So... finally getting around to getting caught up on the new Doctor Who... Flux so far reminds of that Dirk Gently series that ran from 2016 to 2017 for two seasons. I'm specifying which one I'm talking about because there's an older series with a different actor. Anyway... I'm not sure if that's intentionally since Dirk Gently was originally written as Shada for Doctor Who... I mean Chris Chibnal was also apparently responsible for naming an episode 42 without it having anything to do with a Douglas Adams reference. The reason it reminds me of that Dirk Gently series is because we're introduced to a lot of different plot threads that seemingly have nothing to do with each other but we'll find out at the end how they're all connected. The Dirk Gently books and the original series was kind of written that way as well but the main difference with the 2016 series that Flux has in common is that the stories aren't self contained episodes but rather pieces to the over all puzzle. With that said... it's really hard to judge any single episode as good or bad since no single episode is really meant to stand on it's own. You have to watch the series as a whole because that's how the story is meant to play out. I will say... the Halloween Apocalypse has no business being a Halloween episode. They mention trick or treat like once the entire episode and then it never comes up again. It's like they threw that in there just so they could have an excuse to air the episode on Halloween. I feel like if they were going to make a Halloween special it should be a stand alone adventure and not a set up for the whole Flux story line. Also the cold open... we have all these deadly traps set up and they escape with a Ryan George joke. "Super easy, barely an inconvenience" like I don't even understand what just happened it was just a series of poorly written plot conveniences that didn't really make any sense and then they're back in the TARDIS... Why didn't they just START in the TARDIS cause that opening was so bad. The second episode was pretty good and I like how they explain away the classic era Sontorans as that's just how they age so the modern era versions are much younger. The one major flaw in the episode... The Doctor figures out that they need to return to their ship to refuel their suits so they can survive on Earth. The problem with this... aside from the fact that Strax can some how survive on Earth without his Sontoran armor... the observations of the prisoner were also included in figuring this out but that prisoner didn't have access to a ship and was just sleeping during that time when they supposedly needed to refuel their suits... So how was the prisoner able to survive without refueling? Why couldn't the weakness just be that they needed to sleep during that time instead of the whole business about refueling their suits which makes no sense when you put the slightest bit of thought to it. The third episode... is it ever really explained why certain people keep glitching? Like I understand they were going through different moments in their own time line and the Doctor glitched in and out because she was appearing in multiple time lines trying to communicate with them... but like why did Yaz, Dan, and Vinder all show up in the Doctor's time line, only Yaz showed up in Vinder's time line, only the Doctor showed up in Yaz's time line, and NO ONE showed up in Dan's time line. There's also this weird thing where when the Doctor appeared in Yaz's time line she appeared as Doctor not acting in the role of someone else. Yaz appeared in Vinder's time line but never acting as Yaz, she was always filling a role and glitched out once. In the Doctor's time line we only saw herself glitch from Jodi Whittaker to Jo Martain's Doctor and at one point we see Dan glitch into the dog alien from the first episode. It's just over all an episode that doesn't make sense. The best part of the third episode is being introduced to another seemingly unrelated plot thread that actually ties into the main story by the end of the episode. I'm not going to give away the ending but we do find out exactly who the girl is trying to meet up with by the end of the episode. What we still don't know is if they will ever find each other again, that will likely still come towards the end of the series. BTW it looks like fan theories about Vinder being a regenerated Romana were wrong as he appears to be from an entirely different planet. There were also theories floating around about Dan being the guy Donna Noble was suppose to get married to but for whatever reason she changed her mind at the last minute and left him. He does mention a similar story in this episode but it's not directly mentioned that he's talking about Donna Noble. If the rumors are true she might be revealed in a later episode but for now it's just rumors and speculation. Honestly considering Donna was said to die if she ever remembers her adventures with the Doctor again I don't know how they could possibly bring her back without killing her off or making her little more than a cameo. Would bringing her back just to either kill her or do nothing with her be better than imagining she's happily married off screen some where? I don't even like the character but I can't imagine how they could bring her back without pissing off her fan base. I certainly wouldn't want to see Amy or Clara come back just for them to die moments later. So um... over all... I'm enjoying the series so far... there's flaws, it's not perfect, but as I said in the beginning, it's really hard to judge individual episodes when they're just pieces to a greater story and not really meant to stand on their own. My opinion on these episodes might change when we have a better idea of how all these pieces fit together but for now I'm enjoying the ride. I'm also saving all the episodes on my DVR so I can rewatch the entire Flux story as a whole once it's all out. It looks like there's 9 episodes to this series though I've heard Flux is only 6 parts so the last 3 episodes might be separate.
Not yet it’s very low ratings for Doctor Who some of the lowest ever, but it hasn’t reached poor ratings levels like say Batwoman. But Colin Baker got better ratings than this.
Were there still 200,000 viewers left? I recall seeing a BBC statement that they admitted the viewing numbers for the first episode had not been a great as they hoped/wished. But they also expressed the possibility that those would rise during as the story progressed. Guess not. And honestly, with episodes like the one this week I can see people turning away. Last week was mostly a standalone episode and pretty straight forward, but this was...confusing at best.
I liked this one. I mean, I really, really liked this one. Don't know if it's the best in the Chibnall era, but it definitely was the best where Chibnall was one of the writers. And perhaps that's the reason, because the other author was the same who wrote "The Haunting of Villa Diodati", another in general well-liked episode. This was a solid Doctor Who episode, with as far as I'm concerned the only weak points those that connected the story to the general arc. An old English village, Angels everywhere and the Doctor needing to cope, but always a bit outmatched. And of course, a big twist. Even Jodie was on fire giving perhaps some of her best Doctor moments. Very Doctor-y also: Professor "the door wasn't open.", Doctor "the door was open after I opened it". But then, she was again quickly seperated from the companions who only had a minor story, so she had time to shine. Yep, absolutely loved this one. This, this would've been a good epsiode in every era of Who, but here it's very good.
The CLIFFORD film features John Cleese as a possible Time Lord. It's ambiguous enough to be an Easter egg, but you know, Cleese would be a great Time Lord.
John Cleese is a great anything John Cleese wants to be. If he wants to be Bond's Quartermaster, he can be Bond's Quartermaster... if he wants to be Sir Lancelot, he can be Sir Lancelot... if he wants to be a ghost in Hogwarts, he can be a ghost in Hogwarts. John Cleese is a planetary treasure who, given his apparent perpetual appeal, may well be an ACTUAL TIME LORD...
