Eve of the Daleks

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

@dentarthurdent

Eve of The Daleks

Thank you. You rescued me from 5; I was about to watch Warriors of the Deep, just to snigger at The Myrka. This is MUCH better. It comes with a high rep. The long cold start works. Chib’s dialogue practically sparkles. The set-up intrigues. It has urgency. Everyone… well five people… get zapped again and again. And in the end, when the loop closes, they will all be dead, permanently. Oooh Peril.

Written in a hurry due to lockdown production problems which also explains the cast of not very many. Less is more.

Overall, this IS about as good as the very best bits of T’floox, or Villa of The Bad Boys, maybe some parts of other eps, but not MUCH. It seems to me the sense, built around contracting time loops, is lost half way through.

Now you might say I’m not being fair; always running Chib down. What’s wrong now? The fam is under control, the daleks reduced to their primary function, people running down corridors. And the end of the Universe is not on the menu. Whoopie! Should be fine.

Well yes, Dan and Yaz almost function like real people, if it wasn’t that Yaz is reduced to an existence dependent on The Doctor, every seven minutes or so. Or six… five… yeah. Moff got crucified for that didn’t he? Then Dan gets misty eyed about the belle epoque and stops to give Yaz the talk. That’s right, everything stops. The running. The zapping. Problem is, this is a red flag for the rapidly decreasing time available to the doomed as we rush towards the end. I know it’s a metaphor for lives on hold, for the love lorn and Yaz, and it does come with some kind of in-narrative explanation. I could always rewind and put text on, and take notes. But I’m not going to.

Also eight zaps and the Doctor didn’t start to regenerate once.

Oh and there’s STILL northern stuff happenin all over: calm down calm down, whippets, parkin, Blackpool, ee that black pudding’s black.

As for Chib’s love lives of random people, it’s bearable for about a page: the set up, it’s agreeably weird. Oooh. What are you going to do with all this then Chris? Oh. That. You know, for all Chib’s digs at awkward singletons: hoarding, duff new years eves, naggy parents, I can’t help but think Sarah’s initial instincts about Nick were not entirely wrong. Well, I suppose inventing a new character that’s supposed to walk and talk for a whole hour but no more must be tough… but it’s not something Moff ever had that much of a problem with.

The daleks… when Chib first put pen to paper this time, top of the page must have been, ‘what about five people zapped to death what? Forty times between them in an hour?’ THAT is the hook. It’s new ground. Reductio ad absurdum. Actually it’s horrible. And repetitive, and wearing. More is not more. What point is Chris really trying to make? Or is he at all?
Jeff is apparently slang for someone arrogant and manipulative. So it can’t be that.

[nerys @nerys]

@dentarthurdent With Chibz’ Doctor, one got the impression it was there simply to make it ‘sound sciencey’ or maybe make up for something that should have been better plotted.

I agree. That’s why, for me, this episode stands out among the Chibnall-penned ones, because the Doctor’s observations were pertinent, not just filler.

@ps1l0v3y0u Also eight zaps and the Doctor didn’t start to regenerate once.

You know, I never even thought of that.

Still, I find this an enjoyable episode, if one doesn’t scrutinize the details too closely. Which can be true of a fair bit of Doctor Who.

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

@ps1l0v3y0u     All those are valid points.   I have to admit I was unconvinced by the rapid romance between Sarah and weirdo can’t-ever-keep-a-girlfriend Nick.   I just didn’t poke at it too much.   Like a lot of things in this episode, it all starts to unravel if you start pulling at dangling threads.   (Same could be said of many episodes, of course).   As @nerys said, enjoyable enough if one doesn’t scrutinise the details too closely.

I rather think Legend of the Sea Devils would fall apart even quicker, given that treatment.

I must admit to being influenced by ‘feelz’.   If the characters don’t appeal to me, I’m that much more likely to notice inconsistencies or anomalies.   If I like the characters (which may just hinge on a casting decision) then I’m more likely to give the plot logic a bit of slack.     Nowhere was that more evident than Asylum of the Daleks, where I subconsciously wanted to believe in Souffle Girl (because she was so well written and Jenna Coleman conveyed the character so well) even while Moff was figuratively waving red flags in front of our eyes.   (Where did she get the milk?).   My brain just did not want to consider the possibility that she might be a Dalek, even though her ‘mother’ Darla had just turned out to be one.    Nice work, Moff!     Now in that case, of course, the anomalies were deliberate.

Also, maybe I’m more tolerant of Eve of the Daleks (and Legend of the Sea Devils) because of low expectations, stemming from some of Chibz’ previous episodes.

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

@dentarthurdent @nerys

I WAS being picky. ‘Eve’ is a worthy effort. Perhaps, if T’floox was itself an improvement but err… confused, Chris was learning, trying to up his game, maybe (in my mind) telling The Corp to back off: the notional post Moff straightjacket was too tight.

But not all Who falls apart upon inspection. And this was ok. Sally Sparrow and the geek from Blink were an unlikely couple too. Why can’t unlikely people get together and have unsatisfactory relationships which we mercifully don’t then witness? Getting zapped eight times in fifty minutes might well make you less fussy about with whom you jump into a taxi. My point is more that the set-up almost deserved something more, because the cold start was as good writing as we’ve had from Chib.

So I get the ‘moral’: chuck the duff job, bin the junk, new year, new start, live. And Yaz/Doc therefor is also teased, with the Tardis as a taxi. And Dan the gooseberry. You see, Moff and RTD could throw Xmas shapes and everyone knew where they were. Chib had been bumped onto hangover day.

It’s my tastes that demand something more downbeat for Sarah and Nick, and I’m sure Aisling and Adjani would have relished something more… ‘twisty.’ Don’t ask me what.

But Eve is stage 1 of its own 3 part mini series. Chib doesn’t want to peak too soon and keen to present his dalek kill fest thought experiment in sharp relief rather than blur it with a more nuanced resolution. That makes Eve a competent Chib story like 42 or Power of Three, slightly off kilter but not worthy of a foot through the screen.

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

@pa1l0v3y0u   I agree that some Who eps are plotted with perfect logic.   (I’ve never tried to analyse it episode by episode, I hope there would be a large number that do hold up).   As an example of excellence, Blink – in spite of its complications – fitted exactly.   (Well,  I’ve only found one loose end – when Sally Sparrow uncovers the Doctor’s message ‘Duck’ under the wallpaper.   How could the Doctor predict the timing of that?)   But in all other respects, by the third time I watched it and got things straight in my mind, everything in the jigsaw fitted perfectly.   But I would still have been very tolerant of loose ends, it just felt good.

As for the romantic couple, Sally Sparrow was immediately appealing (all credit to Carey Mulligan), and Larry is quite passable (notwithstanding that the first time we encounter him he has no trousers).   Quite credible that Sally and Larry might take over the DVD shop.   In contrast, Laura was okay, nothing remarkable (except, living a rather sad existence), but Nick was truly weird.   Living in a  storage unit with mementos of past short-term girlfriends (but which of the one-night stands bequeathed him a roomful of stuffed animals?).   The only thing Laura and Nick had in common was, they seemed to have no life.   (Oh, and how was Laura’s business surviving if Nick was her only customer?).   Hope she had good insurance on the building that wasn’t nullified by Nick storing dangerous goods in it.

42 was – passable, nothing really exceptional.  Running through corridors against a deadline.  The sentient sun thing was a bit of nonsense though.

Power of Three had a really good premise – mysterious cubes appearing everywhere which did weird things.   Good comedy material.   (Remember the Doug Adams trope about the mice being the projection in our dimension of hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings, and Dentarthurdent protesting that mice were just animals that scientists made run through mazes and so.   And Slartibartfast (IIRC) saying ‘one has to admire the ingenuity’).

Well, I thought the enigmatic cubes were there to experiment on human psychology and reactions to facilitate an alien takeover.   But no, they were just there to kill humans – not all humans, just a third of them.   I found that ridiculous.  Given the technological power needed to create the impervious-to-all-attack cubes, surely the villain could have killed the requisite number of humans with  a far simpler method, a few nukes would do it, or a series of neutron bombs if he wanted to leave infrastructure intact.   And if the cubes were just killer devices, why did they have to ‘do stuff’?, why did they need to be anything more than cute paperweights?   Also, the villain was naff, and the resolution was absurdly simplistic.   Even extending to everyone who had just died coming back to life.   Heart attacks don’t work like that.

 

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

@dentarthurdent

‘Duck. Sally Sparrow!’ Well the Doctor’s got Sally’s notes. Which presumably mention Wester Drumlins so The Doctor either had to go or set up a paradox, or he (more likely) he forgot. All Moffat’s first run of stories were super but Blink was genius level. The best thing you can say about Sally and Larry is it was downbeat, that she was another casualty of The Doctor, a rejected companion (whereas Martha was the unwillingly platonic companion) or that the relationship was somehow in memoriam of Kathy. And, of course, a return to ‘Sparrow and Nightingale.’ But this was a naked man she met wandering about Kathy’s… and I’m surprised Moff didn’t have more fun with the fact that Sally didn’t know Larry was Kathy’s brother. Probably wouldn’t work. We don’t know if Sally and Larry are happy (no don’t do it Carey) but actually it was a faux happy ending.

So maybe Sarah (not Laura) and Nick is faux happy too. Because using a Self Store as a trophy room is quite nasty. And it does seem a bit desperate. And something else is needed to resolve something so mean (if it was intentional) but this a feature of Chib… he can be quite cruel. Unless it’s signalling the Thasmin queer baiting to come? (it is) Maybe an after after sequence with useless Jeff?

But it was good. It would have held up under another show runner. Chib is probably better at stand alones than arcs. 42 was based on the concept of 24 of course. Sentient suns is a reference to Masters of The Vortex. More EE doc Smith please. It was  competent chase with peril, not in a hurry to rewatch. Power of Three was about as good as Chib got… the Shakri was like dry run for The Ravagers unless he sprang fully formed with the mighty cerebral cortex of Berkoff.

Anyway, far better than the Silurian two parter which could have been done in one ep (though the realisation of the lizards was far better than the Sea Devils… just started that one). And as for the Dinosaur epic miss…

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

@ps1l0v3y0u    Oops!  For ‘Laura’ read ‘Sarah’.   Dunno where I got that from.

I’m not querying the Doctor’s presence at Wester Drumlins, he may have been in pursuit of the Angels.   Just, how he knew to write ‘Duck’ on the wall – and then paper over it, unless some subsequent tenant did it? – and that Sally would uncover it just in time to save herself.   That may have been one of the few instances of Moff sacrificing causality for dramatic effect.

It didn’t even occur to me that Sally might have thought Larry was Kathy’s boyfriend.   That might have been a reasonable inference, but I think it became apparent quite quickly he was her brother?   Anyway, all guys are likely to wander around naked if they have to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and there’s no strangers in the house, don’t they?   So not particularly weird.   Whereas Nick was truly strange.

Yes Blink was genius level.

I don’t think Sally was ever a rejected Companion, I don’t think she was ever a candidate.   She only met him the once, right at the end of the episode.   Having got zapped back to ?? by the Angels, without their Tardis, all the Doctor (and Martha) could do was give Billy a message to put on DVD’s (like a message in a bottle) in the hope that someone would find the Tardis and send it back to them.   Which Sally and Larry did.

The Ravagers – were they two of the Flux villains?, I forget.   If they’re the pair I’m thinking of, and the Shakri was the Power of Three villain, then yes they do feel similar in my mind.

The Silurian two parter was very slow, could indeed have been better as one ep.   I kept waiting for some consequence of the Doctor and Amy watching themselves from a distance, but I’m not sure it was ever referred to again?   But yes, the Silurians were much better modelled than the Sea Devils.   And Dinosaurs – what peeved me most was Nefertiti meekly going off with Great White Hunter in the end  (and I’m probably as close to Male Chauvinist Pig as I am to ‘woke’, but that got up my nose).

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