Doctor Who – Rosa Review

Rosa was a truly fantastic episode, shifting the usual focus from monsters and adventures to an important moment in history.

This is the first episode in Doctor Who history to centre on a significant figure from black history. So it feels appropriate that Rosa Parks’ story was written by the first ever black writer for Doctor Who, Malorie Blackman making her TV Doctor Who debut.

I haven’t seen any reaction yet but I already feel like there’s going to be people saying Doctor Who is getting too political. My response to them is, grow up sci-fi and fantasy have always been political.

Rosa treated the real life story of Rosa Parks with the dignity and respect that she deserved.

The way that the horrible reality of racism in the 1950s was unflinchingly depicted was harrowing. I was not expecting an episode of Doctor Who to be so brutally honest.

Rosa was not a sad episode, there was a message of hope that things have and will continue to get better. I think this might be one of the most powerful Doctor Who episodes ever. It really made me cry.

Doctor Who - The Ghost Monument Review

The Ghost Monument, is a thrilling episode with some great character driven plot. Series 11 of Doctor Who is on a role!

Warning, this review will contain spoilers.

The Ghost Monument is the first adventure for the newly formed TARDIS team, in much the same way as End of the World or Beast Below was. Action, adventure, robots, spaceships, alien planets, scares, and mystery. What more do you want from an episode of Doctor Who! Well as with last week, this episode also had very compelling characters too.

The 13th Doctor is awesome! Jodie Whittaker delivered another stellar performance. She just utterly is the Doctor. There’s just so many traits about her that are completely who the Doctor is and should be. I also like that the Doctor’s using Northern colloquialisms like “Let’s get shift on.” After the 12th Doctor it is refreshing to have an empathic Doctor again, one who cares about people, for me that’s a core character trait of the Doctor.

It’s great having a team of companions again. Ryan, Yas and Graham all bring something new to the show. I think it feels like the right balance has been struck for having multiple companions, they’re a team and they’re working together. They feel like different people, but they have each other’s backs, and they’re bringing their individual mindset and skillset to their adventures.

It’s always a sign of bad writing when a significant death doesn’t have any lasting impact, so I like that Grace’s death still has a resonance. Graham is still going through the grieving process and trying to be there for Ryan which is really interesting to watch, very human and very emotional. I know there was some doubt when Bradley Walsh was cast as a companion, but I think - as with the casting of Billie Piper and Catherine Tate – any doubt was unfounded.

Aside from the main TARDIS team this week’s supporting characters, Angstrom and Epzo, were also compelling. Angstrom in particular was an interesting character, resourceful and initially closed off but opening up once she started to trust the Doctor.

This episode perfectly got that zone of scary but not too dark that Doctor Who excels at. Those cloth creatures (whatever they were) were genuinely unnerving. The scares in Doctor Who should be like that, unnerving but not so terrifying that they’ll traumatise the kids who might be watching.

Who else was surprised at the mention of the Stenza? The reveal that the Stenza were responsible for what happened to the planet Desolation, cast a mysterious and ominous shadow over everything that happened. Even in their absence the Stenza are a threat. I’m wondering if that’s why there’s no Daleks this year, because the Stenza are going to be a lurking, and possibly reoccurring big bad. I hope that might be the case because it’s about time Doctor Who had some new big bad monsters, and the Stenza are certainly deeply unpleasant.

Speaking of possible arcs and reoccurring stories, what is the ‘Timeless Child’? I suspect that’s going to become important later on.

This week also gave us our first look at the new TARDIS. Personally I really like this design. We only really got a glimpse of it but I like it. It has elements that sort of feel like they echo the 9th/10th Doctor TARDIS and the 11th Doctor TARDIS. This is a TARDIS that feels like the perfect fusion of organic and mechanical which is what the TARDIS should be. My only complaint is that no one uttered the words “It’s bigger on the inside.”

So to sum up, The Ghost Monument was another entertaining instalment in what promises to be an excellent series of Doctor Who.

Doctor Who - The Woman Who Fell to Earth Review

Doctor Who is back. Jodie Whittaker is the Doctor.

This review will contain some spoilers so be warned…

First off, Jodie Whittaker. She hit the ground running (literally as well as metaphorically!). From the moment we first encountered her, I felt like Jodie Whittaker was the Doctor. Jodie Whitaker’s Doctor was smart, funny, and utterly likeable. This is the newest incarnation of my hero growing up. There were elements of her performance that reminded me a little of Matt Smith and David Tennant but at the same time she utterly made the role her own.

One of the things that makes or breaks any era of Doctor Who is the companions. I think the 13th Doctor is going to have a good team of friends to play off and I think watching the dynamic unfold between them will be really interesting. Each of them is going to bring something different to their adventures with the Doctor. You can already see the traces of what’s going to make them fantastic companions as the series progresses in much the same way that Rose Tyler was showing what she was made of right from the beginning.

Ryan seems to be the smart one but not in a traditional book smart way. It also seems like he has some self-confidence issues which I think the Doctor will help him work through. He was a likeable and relatable character which is what I want to be seeing from any new companion.

Yas seems to have an investigative nose which reminded me somewhat of Sarah Jane, any companion that reminds of Sarah Jane must be doing something right! Also having a companion be a Police Officer is a pretty original idea but one that I think will work well.

I thought Graham was going to be the weakest of the new TARDIS team but I was wrong, I don’t think there is a weak member of the team. It’s interesting to see a companion who’s more cautious, I don’t think that’s really happened before.

I had a feeling that Grace was going to die, but that didn’t undermine the poignancy of her death. I think that her death is going to be something that has an important and powerful lasting impact throughout the series.

Monsters, this episode had a proper monster! If you read my Doctor Who Series 10 reviews you might recall I complained frequently about a lack of proper monsters. Well The Woman Who Fell to Earth gave us a proper monster. I don’t think Tim Shaw will come to be regarded as one of the all-time classic Doctor Who monsters but he was a good adversary for the new Doctor to face.

Even the setting was new, instead of London we’re now in Sheffield. After Clara Oswald and Amy Pond both having fairly vaguely defined backstories it was nice to see the new team having a life in a city before they met the Doctor. I think moving away from London is a smart idea, since 2005 pretty much every series of Doctor Who has been very London heavy so leaving the capital really makes this feel like a fresh start. It was definitely Sheffield, I’m from Yorkshire and it felt like an authentic representation of my county.

Fundamentally this is a ‘new Doctor’ episode. To a certain extent it followed the mould that has been set by The Christmas Invasion and The Eleventh Hour for what a new Doctor episode is. The Doctor has to figure out who they are in their newest incarnation and save the world. That is the type of episode that The Woman Who Fell to Earth is. Is that a bad thing? I don’t think so. This is a new era of Doctor Who, with a brand new Doctor, I think it was right to start the series like this. It was a great episode to whet our appetite for more Who and I definitely want to see more of what this era has in store.

Also I loved that tease we got of the new theme tune over the credits. It gave me a Classic Who vibe in all the best ways.