Doctor Who - Tsuranga Conundrum comments
Nov. 5th, 2018 11:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
auroracloudQuick, soon-after-watching comments on the latest Doctor Who episode.
This was, certainly, a very Chibnall episode. The Chibnallest episode ever. If Lynne on the Verity! podcast (the best Doctor Who podcast, btw) described 'The Arachnids in the UK' as "When The Green Death and The Planet of the Spiders love each other very much..." then this one was "When 42 and Torchwood have a fling, and one of them doesn't use protection..."
So yeah, fast-paced, rompy adventure on a spaceship, weird and a bit ridiculous, middle-sized stakes, lots of family stuff. Fun and character-heavy but somewhat unfulfilling on the plot and meaning side of things. More a snack than a meal. But hey, at least this one didn't have a plot point of an emergency recall button on the outside of the spaceship! He has learned some things over the past 10 years! I'm sure the antimatter technobabble probably didn't make any actual sense, but Whittaker delivered it convincingly enough that I was all "ooh, listen to the shiny Science-ish!" and didn't care about the sense-making. And I always love the Doctor being all in love with fancy science.
I loved having more action for Yaz again in this episode, especially her football-kicking the Pting away and her getting points from the Doctor, and generally getting to be there for a lot of the action stuff and with the Doctor. Oh, and this was another story where women were basically in charge of almost all the plot and the active stuff.
While the male pregnancy thing was a nicely done trope reversal, I wish it hadn't taken Ryan, Graham and Mabli out of action for the entirety of the story. It gave some nice character moments for Ryan, but wasn't really weighty enough to hold such a large portion of the episode. I wished Mabli had had a bit more of a role in the plot and gotten to prove herself in multiple ways, because it seemed like her character was building up to that. On the other hand, we had the Doctor, Yaz, and General Eve Cicero kicking butt, so maybe there just wasn't enough space to develop everyone in multiple ways.
Speaking of the General Cicero, she was amazing. And while I wished she had lived, she had a great, complete character arc, and her death was a part of that, a conclusion of her own story. The aged captain/hero sacrificing themselves to get the ship home and everyone to safety is a good old trope that works. And I loved having a sibling love moment before death - you don't get that sort of thing with siblings very often, I think, it's usually romantic love or parent-child relationship.
Overall - some good characters, fun rompy space adventure, but clearly a filler story. My least favourite of the series so far, but that doesn't mean it was bad, just middling. While it's been nice seeing the Doctor and friends romp around in small-scale adventures where things aren't always ridiculously huge, I do think I'm getting ready for a proper alien invasion or evil galactic mastermind soon. When I said I didn't want all the plots to be huge, I didn't mean take the big plots away entirely! Give us some big plots!
We didn't get the TARDIS back in the end of the story. Will that be a plot point in the next one, or will we just skip straight into how they've got it back again? Considering where and when the next episode is supposed to take place, I can't help thinking it's probably going to be the latter one, which would be a bit unsatisfying, since that plot line doesn't get tied up at all, not even a throwaway line about going back on the next ship to get it back. We'll see.
Looking forward to the next week, and hoping that story will have more weight again. Take a companion back to their family's history, what could possibly go wrong? Curious to see how the politically sensitive time period/setting will be handled this time around...
This was, certainly, a very Chibnall episode. The Chibnallest episode ever. If Lynne on the Verity! podcast (the best Doctor Who podcast, btw) described 'The Arachnids in the UK' as "When The Green Death and The Planet of the Spiders love each other very much..." then this one was "When 42 and Torchwood have a fling, and one of them doesn't use protection..."
So yeah, fast-paced, rompy adventure on a spaceship, weird and a bit ridiculous, middle-sized stakes, lots of family stuff. Fun and character-heavy but somewhat unfulfilling on the plot and meaning side of things. More a snack than a meal. But hey, at least this one didn't have a plot point of an emergency recall button on the outside of the spaceship! He has learned some things over the past 10 years! I'm sure the antimatter technobabble probably didn't make any actual sense, but Whittaker delivered it convincingly enough that I was all "ooh, listen to the shiny Science-ish!" and didn't care about the sense-making. And I always love the Doctor being all in love with fancy science.
I loved having more action for Yaz again in this episode, especially her football-kicking the Pting away and her getting points from the Doctor, and generally getting to be there for a lot of the action stuff and with the Doctor. Oh, and this was another story where women were basically in charge of almost all the plot and the active stuff.
While the male pregnancy thing was a nicely done trope reversal, I wish it hadn't taken Ryan, Graham and Mabli out of action for the entirety of the story. It gave some nice character moments for Ryan, but wasn't really weighty enough to hold such a large portion of the episode. I wished Mabli had had a bit more of a role in the plot and gotten to prove herself in multiple ways, because it seemed like her character was building up to that. On the other hand, we had the Doctor, Yaz, and General Eve Cicero kicking butt, so maybe there just wasn't enough space to develop everyone in multiple ways.
Speaking of the General Cicero, she was amazing. And while I wished she had lived, she had a great, complete character arc, and her death was a part of that, a conclusion of her own story. The aged captain/hero sacrificing themselves to get the ship home and everyone to safety is a good old trope that works. And I loved having a sibling love moment before death - you don't get that sort of thing with siblings very often, I think, it's usually romantic love or parent-child relationship.
Overall - some good characters, fun rompy space adventure, but clearly a filler story. My least favourite of the series so far, but that doesn't mean it was bad, just middling. While it's been nice seeing the Doctor and friends romp around in small-scale adventures where things aren't always ridiculously huge, I do think I'm getting ready for a proper alien invasion or evil galactic mastermind soon. When I said I didn't want all the plots to be huge, I didn't mean take the big plots away entirely! Give us some big plots!
We didn't get the TARDIS back in the end of the story. Will that be a plot point in the next one, or will we just skip straight into how they've got it back again? Considering where and when the next episode is supposed to take place, I can't help thinking it's probably going to be the latter one, which would be a bit unsatisfying, since that plot line doesn't get tied up at all, not even a throwaway line about going back on the next ship to get it back. We'll see.
Looking forward to the next week, and hoping that story will have more weight again. Take a companion back to their family's history, what could possibly go wrong? Curious to see how the politically sensitive time period/setting will be handled this time around...
no subject
Date: 2018-11-05 11:34 pm (UTC)(There was a line in there from Mabli about 'the investigators will want to speak to you, but htey've arranged a teleport back to the right system once that's done')
The other thing I noticed, and loved so much, was the relative scarcity of received pronunciation accents here - the range and variety was really fabulous, and just totally taken for granted, and I loved that. (As well as being a visually diverse cast.)
no subject
Date: 2018-11-06 08:47 am (UTC)(There was a line in there from Mabli about 'the investigators will want to speak to you, but htey've arranged a teleport back to the right system once that's done')
Ah, thanks, I missed that one somehow! Maybe the episode was just a tad too busy with stuff so that some of the important things could be missed, but I'm glad they hadn't forgotten about that plot point completely!
One of the things I totally forgot to mention was the Doctor's line about what she is a doctor of. That's a quote that will live, I hope. After listing all kinds of things from physics to lego, she ends with... "...of hope. Mostly of hope." Doctor of Hope, I think that already sums to Jodie Whittaker's Doctor wonderfully, not to mention being an important point about Doctor Who in general.
The other thing I noticed, and loved so much, was the relative scarcity of received pronunciation accents here - the range and variety was really fabulous, and just totally taken for granted, and I loved that. (As well as being a visually diverse cast.)
Oh yes, yes, I really loved the diversity, both of appearances and accents. Mabli's accent was Welsh, wasn't it? I go by the fact that it sounded very familiar to me and when I took a moment to think, the mental image I had was Gwen Cooper. That was probably another thing that made me think of Torchwood; but also the madcap feel of the adventures and the Pting (though it's also a very Doctor Who critter) and all.