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.

New Doctor New Look

It’s been too long since I wrote something about Doctor Who so in light of the BBC releasing the first official image of Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor I thought I would just share a few thoughts about Doctor Who Series 11.

Image BBC©

Series 11 seems like it is going to be a near complete relaunch for Doctor Who. I think that this will work similarly to the transition between the David Tennant and Matt Smith eras of the show. There were some aspects of continuity between the two of them but for the most part it was a change. More or less everything from the TARDIS (both inside and out) to the Sonic Screwdriver changed. That’s the level of change I expect we will be seeing by the time Jodie Whitaker is on our screens as the Doctor.

Based on the newly released image Jodie Whitaker looks very much like she is the Doctor. The whole ensemble of her new outfit just looks very Doctor-ish. I'm glad that they haven't done anything sexist and cringey like putting the Doctor in something pink or making her wear heels just because she's a woman (I was slightly worried they might do that). I'm also glad that once again the Doctor will be wearing a long coat.

In the background of the newly released promotional image of Jodie Whitaker as the Doctor we got our first look at her new TARDIS. To me the Police Box now looks a lot like the version that was used back in the 70s by the 3^rd and 4^th Doctors. I wonder if that’s a possible hint as to what the interior is going to look like. Will we finally see a TARDIS which has “the round things” again?

The Doctor is also going to be travelling with a team of companions in Series 11. My main thought about this is that it reminds me of the very first Tardis team with Ian, Barbara and Susan. I wonder if that's going to be something that's referenced. Perhaps giving her a full team of companions is a way of legitimising Jodie Whitaker as the first female Doctor by echoing the early years when multiple companions were the norm. I'm going to be reserving judgement until we know more because we literally know nothing about them right now! And remember people dismissed Billie Piper and Catherine Tate when they were initially cast yet no one (or at least no sensible person) would dismiss Donna Nobel and Rose Tyler now.

One of the main things that Series 11 is going to have to do is recapture the family audience. Doctor Who should never ever get too dark. Dark stories belong in the expanded universe and in adult spin-offs like Torchwood. There’s no denying that throughout the Capaldi era Doctor Who has struggled in the ratings and mainstream popularity. A part of why Doctor Who was such a massive success back in 2005 was because it aimed at the family audience. Jodie Whittaker needs to connect with the younger audience in the same way Christopher Ecclestone, David Tennant and Matt Smith did. Doctor Who needs to re-attract the 9 year old kids that will then read Doctor Who Adventures magazine and hunt down the action figures of their favourite characters. If the show if to survive beyond Series 11 it needs to bring in a new generation of fans.

In conclusion, I am cautiously optimistic about the future of Doctor Who. I really want Series 11 to be the smash hit success that Doctor Who deserves. So far I haven’t seen anything to make me nervous about the future of the series but I hope that my faith will not turn out to be misplaced.

Jodie Whittaker is The New Doctor – My Reaction

As you probably know yesterday the BBC announced that Jodie Whittaker will be playing the 13^th Doctor in the next series of Doctor Who. This announcement has sparked a lot of reaction, debate and conversation online and I thought I should add my voice to this.

First off, it is far too early to be judging what the new Doctor is like. We haven’t seen her in an episode yet. We haven’t even seen what her costume is going to be. We really don’t know what she is going to be like. This immediate knee jerk reaction to dismiss the new Doctor happens every single time. I remember the near total dismissal when Matt Smith was cast and now he is regarded as one of the best Doctors. I think everyone who has already written her off – whatever their reason - needs to give her a chance first.

I have seen some reactions that seem to think because we’ve had Rey in Star Wars and Wonder Woman has had a movie that we don’t need any more women in sci-fi/fantasy. This just completely misses the point. The number of men compared to the number of women in sci-fi/fantasy is still vastly unequal. It would be nice if we could get to a point where women in sci-fi/fantasy are just seen as characters rather than female characters however part of that coming about is through choices being made like casting a female Doctor.

The Doctor being female is definitely going to change the dynamic of the show. But that’s not a bad thing. Change has always been at the core of Doctor Who. Whoever was cast as the 13^th Doctor was going to change the dynamic of the series. The grandfatherly 1^st Doctor has a completely different dynamic to the cool 10^th Doctor. Doctor Who never stays exactly the same and introducing the first female Doctor is just another change.

Sadly Doctor Who has been in a weak position lately. Whatever your opinion is on the 12^th Doctor, Clara Oswald, Bill Potts and the past few series it is hard to deny that the show is in a precarious position. Ratings have been declining and main stream appeal has been lost. Christmas 2016 was the first one since 2005 were none of the major high street stores listed Doctor Who toys in their Christmas gift guides. There’s not really many younger viewers becoming Whovians at the moment.  Before the announcement yesterday I had assumed that the BBC would see a female Doctor as too big a risk given the uncertainty around the show’s future. However the BBC seem to have decided that right now is the time to take a bit of a risk and finally cast a female Doctor. It was possibly a casting decision that was motivated by a want to get people talking about the show again which it certainly has done! I hope for the sake of the shows future that this is a risk that will pay off in terms of support for the series.

Also I’d like to see how River Song will react to learning that her husband is now her wife. River’s story was nicely concluded in The Husbands of River Song. However I would be really interested to watch Jodie Whitaker’s Doctor meeting her wife, Professor River Song.

Right now it is too early to say if Series 11 of Doctor Who will be good and if Jodie Whitaker is going to be good as the 13^th Doctor. A lot is going to depend on who her companion (or companions) are, what her stories are like, how her Doctor is going to be written and what monsters is she going to be fighting. However I have faith that Doctor Who is about to enter a new era that will end up being a very highly regarded and much loved era.