v6/site/tv/doctor-who.md

```
title = "Doctor Who"
```

<!-- episode "S12E01" 2020-01-03 -->
It wasn’t amazing, but it was a hell of a lot better than Series 11.

Hi Stephen Fry, bye Stephen Fry.

The visual effect the aliens had at the beginning, with the taking on the image of what they walked through was really cool. The bright, glowy look isn’t quite as scary.

How many evil corporations have there been in Doctor Who which are very clearly parodies of tech giants like Google?

When Yaz was inside the wherever it is, I swear I heard the sound of the TARDIS wheezing for just a second. It would make sense if the fan theory about it being [The Matrix](https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/The_Matrix) from Classic Who.

Sacha Dhawan was pretty good in what little we’ve seen of him as The Master. I’m not sure how he’ll compare to Michelle Gomez who is an incredibly tough act to follow (I absolutely adore Missy).

The whole episode went by without actually seeing the TARDIS go anywhere. It was just: get in one place *cut* get out somewhere else.

Speaking of TARDISes, seeing The Master’s flying alongside the plane was cool.

Overall:

The writing was better than Series 11. Still not great (a bit heavy on the exposition), but a fair bit better than I grew to expect from Chibnall. I hope he continues to improve.

The inside of the TARDIS still seems cramped right around the console, but the lighting is better (you can actually see now).

Sure, the episode was a bit cheesy. But in fun, campy way.

<!--episode "S12E02" 2020-01-05 -->
In some ways it was good, in some ways it was bad.

Jodie Whittaker and Sacha Dhawan are both great.

The callback to The Master's drumbeat was nice.

The Doctor siccing the Nazis on The Master (after getting rid of the perception filter) felt unnecessarily cruel and very un-Doctor-like.

Ada Lovelace and Noor Inayat Khan were both kind of... pointless? I liked them, but there was nothing they did that couldn't just as well have been done by someone else.

I'm glad the three companions weren't entirely useless.

I don't like how Chibnall so quickly and careless killed off all of Gallifrey. It still feels like it just came back from the Time War.

Also, I'm not sure how I feel about potentially rewriting the identity of the Time Lords/Gallifreyans.

Overall, a pretty good episode. Not amazing, but not terrible. I am tentatively hopeful for the rest of the season.

<!-- episode "S12E03" 2020-01-19 -->
The message had the subtlety of a sledgehammer. The episode was neither terrible nor great. The writing could use work, but everything else was pretty good.

<!-- episode "S12E04" 2020-01-21-->
WHOEVER DID THE FUCKING SOUND MIXING FOR THIS SEASON NEEDS TO BE FIRED. At one moment, when there was no speech, no music, just a background sound effect: the volume started out reasonably, then got quiet for a second, then got really loud, and then got quiet again. It's just plain incompetence.

Yes Yaz, that small shelf of baguettes is going to stop the giant alien scorpion.

The guy who played Tesla was pretty good.

Ada Lovelace and Noor Inayat Khan: not allowed to remember The Doctor
Nikola Tesla: yeah whatever lol

Overall, a decent episode. Not amazing, but not bad. (Chibnall wasn't involved, surprise surprise)

<!-- episode "S12E05" 2020-02-02 -->
Sure, the Judoon are ridiculous, but I love them.

Yay, Captain Jack! As cheesy (in a good way) as ever.

I did not see that twist coming. This could either turn out very well or very poorly. My money is on the new Doctor being from an alternate universe.

I love the new Doctor's TARDIS. It's very reminiscent of Hartnell's (round things! and a hexagonal up-y-down-y bit in the console! it looks wayyy better than Jodie's TARDIS).

I like this look for the Galifreyan. It reminds me of their appearance in the RTD era, but updated.

Pacing was a little bit all over the place, and the companions were almost entirely useless, but overall it was a pretty enjoyable episode.

<!-- episode "S12E06" 2020-03-01 -->
It's been a while since I watched this episode, so this will be rather sparse. I recall thinking "oh look, it's another episode about the environment". Aside from that, it was a solidly okay episode.

<!-- episode "S12E07" 2020-03-01 -->
This episode was also solidly okay (shocker, it was (co)written be Chibnall). Why can't we have more like "Fugitive of the Judoon"?
The plot felt unnecessarily complicated.
The pacing was bad. It kept building up and then everything was wrapped up 5 minutes before the end. And then we're treated to a bunch of insincere feel-gooddery (partially from characters we had no connection to whatsoever).
Maybe Ryan will end up leaving, then the pacing might be a bit saner without four main characters.

I'm not sure if I trust Chibnall to write the whole concluding arc of this series well. It seems like it's somehow going to involve: the Master, all of Time Lord society, the Timeless Child, and the alternate Doctor. And I don't think he's demonstrated that he has the writing chops to pull off something that complex.

All the stuff set in Syria just seemed unnecessary.

That thing with the fingers was creepy and well done, though.

So did the Doctor use the force to magically get the sonic screwdriver out of her pocket and into her hand?

The villains were pretty well done.

Overall, not bad, but not great.

<!-- episode "S12E08" 2020-07-31 -->
This was a surprisingly good one (and guess what, Chibnall didn't write it). I thought it was just going to be an average filler episode that happened to involve Lord Byron and Mary Shelley, but it was not. Maxine Alderton did a great job, I hope she writes more episodes in the future.

The parallels to Frankenstein were pretty well done. They weren't surprising, but the weren't overemphasized, which was nice.

The design of the lone Cyberman was great.

I greatly enjoyed at the end when the Doctor got all dark and serious. Very different in the way she has been written and compared to how Jodie usually plays her.

Even before the Cyberman showed up, it was a good creepy episode. The shifting house was neat.

This was definitely one of my favorites of Series 12. It was vey well written and entertaining. And, unlike "Fugitive of the Judoon", it was entertaining without relying on huge reveals.

<!-- episode "S13E01" 2022-01-06 -->
the dog person was pretty funny

Sontarans!

there was a crapton of stuff going on, but overall I enjoyed it. there was so much stuff happening, I don't really have more coherent thoughts

<!-- episode "S13E02" 2022-01-16 -->
the doctor yelling at the british general for destroying the retreating sontaran ships was very 'tenth doctor and harriet jones'

the doctor seemed a lot more authoritative in this episode than she did in the last season, and i really like that

also Dan is growing on me

this episodes was pretty good. still a lot of different threads, so it's hard to judge, but it seems like they're going to converge in the next episode

<!-- episode "S13E03" 2022-01-17 -->
lmao, the video compression absolutely cannot handle the scenes where the doctor's floating in time or whatever with Mori

the tamagotchi thing is odd

they've done a good job making the weeping angels scarier this season, I look forward to seeing more of them next episode

this season continues to be... a lot. and i'm halfway through already. i hope there are more answers soon

<!-- episode "S13E04" 2022-01-20 -->
this episode was very good, the angels were nice and scary. don't really have much to say beyond that

we are four out of six episodes in without many answers, so i fear this is going to be another "chibnall can't write a good conclusion/payoff"

<!-- episode "S13E05" 2022-01-21 -->
I dislike that the doctor becoming an angel is almost immediately reversed and seems to have no consequences

this whole “Doctor Who: Tomb Raider” thing was a bit weird. couldn’t they have found the weird british guy less roundaboutly?

Kate Stewart!

oh, the Sontarans are back?

so Swarm and the other alien have been running around doing things this entire time just to revenge themselves upon the Division?

this episodes was… less great. Of course the Division is Tecteun, it’s all connected and it has to be connected to the Timeless Child. I’m not convinced that Chibnall will be able to tie everything up without something feeling contrived/deus ex machina-y

<!-- episode "S13E06" 2022-01-25 -->
A Sonataran scarfing down junk food in a corner shop? What the fuck.

The multiple Doctors interacting with themselves was cute.

Time is a… being?

So the 90% or whatever of the universe that was destroyed at the beginning remains gone, I guess. And the Doctor just committed triple genocide? Uh…

And Tecteun is gone, but that Ood is still on the Division ship. Are there other Division operatives? Are they still going to another universe? Who knows!

This was not a good episode. Unsurprisingly, as with most Chibnall stories, the build up is good/decent but the ending sucks. There was no payoff this episode, no single big finale. The story just kind of fizzles out. Chibnall cannot possibly think this is good writing, can he? Like, there are _so many_ loose ends.

<!-- episode "Series 13 Conclusion" 2022-01-25 -->
I try not to shit directly on writers just because I don’t like things—I’m certainly not half as creative, so what gives me the right? I recognize that people have different tastes and that not everything has to be written for me. But this wasn’t just not for me. This was bad.

Honestly, I would be entirely fine with this series being never spoken of again once RTD returns.

I like the idea of this series, doing a serial again, but this was just not good enough. There were way too many distinct threads and they didn’t manage to come together nicely. And the overall concept of the arc was confusing. Like, the entire season could have been just about the end of the universe or just about the Doctor trying to find the Division and the plot would have been far less confusing and still perfectly entertaining.

I’m really sad. I really like Jodie Whittaker as The Doctor; she’s excellent when she gets to actually do things rather than standing around being expositioned at. She deserves so much better than Chibnall’s awful writing.