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The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos Bad
So, uh, I've had a lot of mixed feelings about this season of Doctor Who. I went and saw the series premiere in a theatrical screening and it largely left me pretty cold, and ever since the episodes have played to me very unevenly. (I really liked some stuff but other stuff... not so much). I just watched the series finale so I decided to hammer out some of my thoughts on it as a whole ahead of the New Years' Special and the year-long (!!!) hiatus.
(I think it goes without saying, but SPOILERS FOR DOCTOR WHO SERIES 11 under the cut.)
1) Good characters, Thinly-drawn Relationships
So the thing that really left me cold with the premiere when I saw it was that I really didn't gel with any of the companions. In fact, I tweeted "The Thirteenth Doctor has two pulses and everyone else on the show has zero", which might be one of the meanest things I've ever said about the show. As the episodes unfolded I realized the problem wasn't the characters themselves, but rather that a lot of the interactions between them were so thinly drawn. Because there were so many companions, none of them really seemed to create the kind of bond that past companions have had with the Doctor. Hell, Yaz was so underwritten that what the character did have was through the sheer force of will of Mandip Gill's acting abilities.
Ryan and Graham had the only actual character relationship and character arc(s) of the season, and the way the finale executed it was a bit clunky. This wasn't helped by the fact that key moments contributing to this arc in the episodes leading up to the finale often happened with the characters separated/experiencing development separately from each other. The previous episode, It Takes You Away, is particularly guilty of this. So while it hits the beats well enough, the final resolution almost feels unearned. It's not helped that the "lesson" Graham learns to complete this arc involves...
2) Bad and Broken Aesops
So the idea that the Doctor doesn't like war and sees preemptive aggression as bad is nothing new to the character or the show. The Tenth Doctor in particular dealt with this a fair amount. However, all those instances involved the show showing the Doctor as a flawed moral arbitrator. In The Christmas Invasion he punishes Harriet Jones for preemptively destroying the aliens attacking London by striping her of her title as Prime Minister, creating a power vacuum that allows the Master to take over the world. He directly violates the laws of time by rescuing the remaining crew in The Waters of Mars and nearly derails a key moment in human history, only being saved by one of the humans condemning his actions and committing suicide to keep the timeline intact. Hell, the Twelfth Doctor has his memories of Clara stripped away after he pulls her out of time at the moment of her death, once again violating the laws of time.
I want to focus on the first example, because it involves the Doctor acting as the judge and jury, resulting in dire consequences because he didn't have the right to do what he did. In much the same way, in The Woman Who Fell to Earth, the Thirteenth Doctor condemns Karl for fighting back against the monster that's spent the whole episode trying to kill him. In The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos the Doctor condemns Graham's desire for revenge for the death of Grace in much the same way, declaring that he would be the same as Tim Shaw. She essentially tells Graham that by killing a genocidal monster, he'd be the same as a genocidal monster. That reads as... uh... very tone-deaf considering the times we're living in. Not to mention that allowing Tim Shaw to live at the end of the first episode is -what causes- the thousands of years of suffering and genocide. Tim Shaw himself even explains as much to the Doctor. But for some reason, the show isn't interested in having the Doctor examine her choices or experience a true moral conflict, but rather in having Graham realize that the Doctor is right and back down. It all reads very hollow and extremely patronizing on the part of the writers.
I'm not even going to get into the episode where the Amazon stand-in was the good guy and the moral was essentially a variation of "fighting back against exploitative corporations is bad."
3) Plot? Consistent Episode Quality?
Aside from the premiere and the finale, there was almost nothing in the way of a recurring plot. This would be fine if the individual episodes were stronger. But honestly I wasn't thrilled with a lot of them. The acting was always pretty consistently good, but it wasn't always enough to overcome some weak/lazy/bizarre writing.
Episodes I Really Liked/Loved
11x03 Rosa
11x06 Demons of the Punjab
11x08 The Witchfinders
Episodes I Though Were Okay/Entertaining Enough
11x02 The Ghost Monument
11x07 Kerblam! (like the theme was a mess but at least it was FUN)
11x09 It Takes You Away
Episodes I Forgot Existed Until I Wrote This List
11x05 The Tsuranga Conundrum
Episodes I Actively Disliked/Hated
11x01 The Woman Who Fell to Earth (I dislike a lot of Doctor introductions so this actually isn't a huge shock tbh)
11x04 Arachnids in the UK
11x10 The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos
So yeah, that's my snappy judgement for this series and I'm mildly hopeful that the New Years' Special will be good (especially since the Daleks are rumored to appear). The show has the cast to do well, I just wish it consistently had the writing too.
(I think it goes without saying, but SPOILERS FOR DOCTOR WHO SERIES 11 under the cut.)
1) Good characters, Thinly-drawn Relationships
So the thing that really left me cold with the premiere when I saw it was that I really didn't gel with any of the companions. In fact, I tweeted "The Thirteenth Doctor has two pulses and everyone else on the show has zero", which might be one of the meanest things I've ever said about the show. As the episodes unfolded I realized the problem wasn't the characters themselves, but rather that a lot of the interactions between them were so thinly drawn. Because there were so many companions, none of them really seemed to create the kind of bond that past companions have had with the Doctor. Hell, Yaz was so underwritten that what the character did have was through the sheer force of will of Mandip Gill's acting abilities.
Ryan and Graham had the only actual character relationship and character arc(s) of the season, and the way the finale executed it was a bit clunky. This wasn't helped by the fact that key moments contributing to this arc in the episodes leading up to the finale often happened with the characters separated/experiencing development separately from each other. The previous episode, It Takes You Away, is particularly guilty of this. So while it hits the beats well enough, the final resolution almost feels unearned. It's not helped that the "lesson" Graham learns to complete this arc involves...
2) Bad and Broken Aesops
So the idea that the Doctor doesn't like war and sees preemptive aggression as bad is nothing new to the character or the show. The Tenth Doctor in particular dealt with this a fair amount. However, all those instances involved the show showing the Doctor as a flawed moral arbitrator. In The Christmas Invasion he punishes Harriet Jones for preemptively destroying the aliens attacking London by striping her of her title as Prime Minister, creating a power vacuum that allows the Master to take over the world. He directly violates the laws of time by rescuing the remaining crew in The Waters of Mars and nearly derails a key moment in human history, only being saved by one of the humans condemning his actions and committing suicide to keep the timeline intact. Hell, the Twelfth Doctor has his memories of Clara stripped away after he pulls her out of time at the moment of her death, once again violating the laws of time.
I want to focus on the first example, because it involves the Doctor acting as the judge and jury, resulting in dire consequences because he didn't have the right to do what he did. In much the same way, in The Woman Who Fell to Earth, the Thirteenth Doctor condemns Karl for fighting back against the monster that's spent the whole episode trying to kill him. In The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos the Doctor condemns Graham's desire for revenge for the death of Grace in much the same way, declaring that he would be the same as Tim Shaw. She essentially tells Graham that by killing a genocidal monster, he'd be the same as a genocidal monster. That reads as... uh... very tone-deaf considering the times we're living in. Not to mention that allowing Tim Shaw to live at the end of the first episode is -what causes- the thousands of years of suffering and genocide. Tim Shaw himself even explains as much to the Doctor. But for some reason, the show isn't interested in having the Doctor examine her choices or experience a true moral conflict, but rather in having Graham realize that the Doctor is right and back down. It all reads very hollow and extremely patronizing on the part of the writers.
I'm not even going to get into the episode where the Amazon stand-in was the good guy and the moral was essentially a variation of "fighting back against exploitative corporations is bad."
3) Plot? Consistent Episode Quality?
Aside from the premiere and the finale, there was almost nothing in the way of a recurring plot. This would be fine if the individual episodes were stronger. But honestly I wasn't thrilled with a lot of them. The acting was always pretty consistently good, but it wasn't always enough to overcome some weak/lazy/bizarre writing.
Episodes I Really Liked/Loved
11x03 Rosa
11x06 Demons of the Punjab
11x08 The Witchfinders
Episodes I Though Were Okay/Entertaining Enough
11x02 The Ghost Monument
11x07 Kerblam! (like the theme was a mess but at least it was FUN)
11x09 It Takes You Away
Episodes I Forgot Existed Until I Wrote This List
11x05 The Tsuranga Conundrum
Episodes I Actively Disliked/Hated
11x01 The Woman Who Fell to Earth (I dislike a lot of Doctor introductions so this actually isn't a huge shock tbh)
11x04 Arachnids in the UK
11x10 The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos
So yeah, that's my snappy judgement for this series and I'm mildly hopeful that the New Years' Special will be good (especially since the Daleks are rumored to appear). The show has the cast to do well, I just wish it consistently had the writing too.