Resolution

[RougeCyberman @rougecyberman]

Yes that was such a good moment.

[swordwhale @swordwhale]

Well there we are, a full season!

Loved it! Bought my first sonic and found a reasonable facsimile of the Doctor’s coat at Goodwill. And a tardis hat at another thrift shop.

This forum is great. Carry on.

Gawd, the wait for the return is gonna be a loooooooooooooong one…

[peladon1972 @peladon1972]

Having watched the whole series including the new years special i am very disappointed in it.

It was underwhelming to say the least. Chris Chibnall cannot write proper sci fi to save his life.

I think he should stop writing, run the show and employ proper sci fi writers like old who. Then see about the doctor bringing back the time lords from the pocket universe they are in. It is just not sci fi

enough for my liking.

 

[nerys @nerys]

Well, all I can say is that I enjoyed this season. It had its ups and downs, but then I can say that about every season of Doctor Who I’ve watched. Apparently I must not be a proper sci fi fan.

[imnotastoxicasmyoldusernamewouldsuggest @rosasucksandsodoess11]

this episode was average at best, it (like the rest of S11 of the propaganda piece I used to call doctor who) was a bit of a meh, I think that the least terrible episode was the first but that was probably just based on my misplaced hype for it.

[imnotastoxicasmyoldusernamewouldsuggest @rosasucksandsodoess11]

@peladon1972 couldn’t agree more

[IAmNotAFishIAmAFreeMan @pedant]

@rosasucksandsodoess11

Yeah, not really trying there are you?

[Miapatrick @miapatrick]

@peladon1972 while I also feel CC has more potential as a show runner than main writer (and needs to find his Moffart), I don’t think Doctor Who has ever been hard sci-fi. As for the Timelords, Phaseshift did an excellent blog on this subject.

[peladon1972 @peladon1972]

It also was never soft sci fi either as evidenced by the deadly assassin’s story that generated the Matrix trilogy  is not exactly soft sci fi either. I also never liked the last of the timelords as it was too  much like the last of the Mohicans

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[peladon1972 @peladon1972]

It also was never soft sci fi either as evidenced by the deadly assassin’s story that generated the Matrix trilogy  is not exactly soft sci fi either. I also never liked the last of the timelords as it was too  much like the last of the Mohicans

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip]

@miapatrick and @peladon1972

Doctor Who is a mix between sci-fi and fantasy. Where, exactly, each story places on the Mohs Scale of Science Fiction hardness depends entirely on the writer, and has done from the beginning. Generally speaking, we’re talking really, really soft as the story becomes SF-in-name-only. We want a horror story about a hand that possesses people and turns into Something Evil? Fine, just make the Something Evil an alien… 😈

Deadly Assassin uses SF tropes; virtual reality was around since the 1930’s and the Matrix itself was definitely a hard SF concept. But the fact that one story is hard-SF based doesn’t say a thing about any other Doctor Who story.

By the way, critiquing Chibnall while making an elementary continuity error yourself is not necessarily a good look.

[peladon1972 @peladon1972]

<p style=”text-align: left;”>@bluesqeakpip</p>
You make some good points. However my opinion of Chibnalls writing has not changed. He has to me an underwhelming style of writing. It would be interesting if the doctor could leave the earth and go to other places and times in the universe like this majority of the doctors. Dr Who on earth does tend to get a bit boring at times.

 

 

[Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip]

@peladon1972

It would be interesting if the doctor could leave the earth and go to other places and times in the universe

The Ghost Monument
The Tsuranga Conundrum
Kerblam!
The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos

That’s over a third of the series on other planets and I’m not even counting the historicals.

[peladon1972 @peladon1972]

No I mean leave the earth permanently. Like classic who.

[janetteB @janetteb]

I don’t recall the Doctor ever leaving the earth permanently in classic Who.  I think a good mix of earth based and off earth stories works best.

@miapatrick I agree that Chibnell needs to find his Moffat. What this most recent series lacked was those moments of brilliance. there were no absolute duds though.

Cheers

Janette

[peladon1972 @peladon1972]

@janetteb

Although it has been while since I have watched it I do not recall tom baker’s tenure having many earth stories in it.

The bulk of them were not of the earth.

Cheers janet

[janetteB @janetteb]

@peladon1972 Clearly time you did  a re-watch then. (Always worthwhile anyway. One can never re-watch Dr Who too much.) Just for example this list is from the first four series. I could continue but am aware that I work waiting and don’t have time to complete it.

Robot, Terror of the Zygons, Pyramids of Mars, (hist’) The Android Invasion, The Seeds of Doom, Masque of Mandragora, (hist’) Hand of Fear, Talons of Weng Chian, (hist’) Horror of Fang Rock, (hist’) Image of the Fendahl,,

Of course back in the Pertwee years there were several series set entirely on earth as a result of BBC budget cuts.

Cheers

Janette

[syzygy @thane16]

Finally. I watched Resolution.

I HAD seen maybe 10 minutes (Dalek on Lin & she was very, very good) -but not the first 2-3 minutes as the 3 soldiers bury their Dalek pieces.

Some bits were odd. Doctor: “I’m going old school. Using lights, street cameras” etc.

Dalek then shoots them out and Doctor says: “it’s shot them out!” But I aint no writer. It seemed a tad repetitive.

But. The angles, the new lenses, the TARDIS was very real & totally confident. I didn’t realise, til I watched the Special Features, just how exy it was. How enormous in colour & movement & tone, too.

But the audio? That was probably the best balanced voice/music/sound FX we’ve had in Who. Adegboyega’s voice was superb & the music was beautifully balanced except one slightly odd drum kick suddenly ‘oops’ cut to flying Dalek didn’t work.  Very minor thing, obviously. The skill sets where you see Charlotte/Lin driving the car & yet it’s a pod car? blew my mind.

What I liked, & only thinking about it later, looking back at Season 11, is how the Dalek plot was handled. It killed everything in its way, immediately. But it was still weak, with Lin’s personality set up with sufficient subtlety that it made sense for her, like Aaron, but for different reasons, to defeat  the uncased Dalek. Normally Dalek episodes are  sombre, horribly scary, the worst of the worst of squid enemies out there but this was differently toned?

Perhaps the lenses? The movement between people & the on-going conversations created a different mood? Less of the “you will be exterminated” & more room for Ryan’s & Aaron’s chat. A still camera. Elongating those moments.

Liked it. I might watch it again. After I’ve had some pickled onions. If it’s one thing I like with Daleks, it’s microwaved spinach & pickled onions. With ‘corn.

[janetteB @janetteb]

@thane16 We re-watched it a few weeks ago and though I had seen it I had mostly forgotten what happened. Just remembered that we liked it at the time.  The mood/feel of this most recent series is very different, maybe in part because of the difference in music but there is a difference in (visual) tone too.

It was an interestingly different type of Dalek story which was good. So hard for writers to make a story involving Daleks feel new and fresh after fifty + years and so kudos to Chibnell for achieving that, Having forgotten much of what happened I got a bit of a chill when I realised that the “creature” was the blob from inside a Dalek.

Cheers

Janette

[Draigh @draigh]

I just watched it and felt it was a great way to close the first seasons.

One question though I hope someone can help me with though…

The Dalek kept saying he was going to call in the fleet…but, hasnt the Doctor just about eliminated every Dalek in existance (minus the hidden one, like the one this episode and a bunch or others). Couldnt she just have said, good luck, but I deleted your race…

[winston @winston]

@draigh    Welcome!  One thing I have learned about Doctor Who is that there are always more Daleks, always. I don’t know how but they always come back. That is a good thing though , Daleks are cool bad guys.

[FearsomeDaleks @fearsomedaleks]

Hi. I’m a newbie to this forum. One thing has been bugging me with the latest TV series. For the internal scenes set within the Tardis and looking towards its doors to the outside, the words ‘Police (Public Call) Box’ at the top of the doors are not reversed as they have been in previous series and as you would expect to see from the inside of the Tardis. This doesn’t make sense at all. Surely the BBC Dr Who props team would have considered this? There is no reason to be able to see these words not reversed from inside the Tardis? What’s going on?

[The Idiot From Gallifrey Base @dalekbuster523]

@fearsomedalek Maybe in-universe the TARDIS is just toying with the Doctor? I think it’s such a small issue that it can be waved away easily enough.

[Draigh @draigh]

@winston

I realise there are always more Daleks (and I’m glad there are) I guess I just wanted the doctor to ‘upset’ the dalek and tell this ‘Dalek scout’ that there is no more fleet. That they werent all that superior, etc…

And there always being more Daleks also comes from some showing up from weird and unusual places or circumstances. But in general, there shouldnt be a ‘fleet’ anymore…

[Robsie @robsiehallert]

Howdy, all the threads on here are old and I just found the site, I don’t normally look for forums, so I’m just going around commenting on the episodes of the new series I liked for the last few seasons.
This was certainly one of them. I saw stellar performances from the entire cast, a menacing villainous take on the Daleks and some great one-liners. Great shooting and set design and the joke about the Brexity end of UNIT was fantastic. More of that please (I doubt anyone’s listening, but it must be said.)

Also, I always hoped the woman in white beside Rassilon was Susan’s mother, too, but the one thing Doctor Who never seems to want to touch is The Doctor’s family on Gallifrey. I don’t mind it being left vague, but I do get cranky about convoluted time nonsense being shoved into the only really relatable thing about the character: the Doctor had a family once. The generally do-gooding is fun, of course, but any old superhero does that. (I kind don’t like the superhero aspects of the Doctor, I do like the goofy meddler aspects though.)

And this episode was ALL goofy meddler. Even when she tried to invoke the “Oncoming Storm” rep, it was still charming. That’s the Doctor I love to watch!

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

Well that was no Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos (thank goodness)
It started well, with a sweeping concept (the Pacific Islands weren’t part of the known world 900 years ago, but I can overlook that) but then it scaled back to something much more mundane.

Chibnall can’t do dialogue nearly as well as his predecessors. As some reviewer commented, the initial scene with the two archaeologists would have been warming with RTD, funny with the Moff, but just kinda awkward with Chibnall.
And it had large chunks of East Enders dropped into it – e.g. the scenes with Ryan and his father. Doubtless very touching but it ain’t NuWho. And I’ll defend that contention – almost all domestic scenes with previous NuWho docs this century have been either quite brief, OR have included the Doctor, or both.

And that bloody microwave oven wasn’t a Chekhov’s gun, it was a Chekhov’s cannon.

When I realised what the ‘octopus’ was, I was quite apprehensive (and almost offended) by what Chibnall might do with the Daleks; but I have to say, he did quite well, and didn’t perpetrate any massive retconning. I was quite pleased (and surprised) that Lin survived her Dalek experience. I don’t know why the Dalek would leave her alive as a witness but I can invent a reason – it needed her help to settle into its shell and then she crawled away while it was setting up shop – not great but that’ll do.

The home-made Dalek shell was convincing – though where it got the advanced weapons from in a farm workshop I don’t know, but hey, Dalek magic. It was genuinely frightening in being able to massacre squads of soldiers (I wanted a main battle tank to shoot it with a depleted uranium discarding-sabot round – that would’ve fixed it – but I understand there isn’t always one handy). Its final disposal seemed a bit anticlimactic – lost its grip?

I still can’t see the 13th Doctor as an alien, just as a Yorkshire lass who talks too much. Not enough gravitas, I think Yaz has more (though this may just be because she has a lot fewer lines). And in fact, as someone noted, why didn’t the Dalek latch onto Yaz instead? It would finally have given Yaz (who I like) something to do, generated some genuine companion danger, and reduced the passenger count. Nothing against Lin (who was good), but the Tardis was getting quite crowded. Especially with that hokey interior with those six bent crystal columns nodding at each other. ‘Bigger on the inside’ worked best when the inside was truly ‘big’.

Final note – it seems the Doctor has – finally – fixed her problems with the Tardis navigation circuits, which as recently as Witchfinders were all over the place.

So, reasonably watchable.

 

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

[Well now, went to post this and I see the last post here was – me, a year and a half ago. My views on this ep have changed a little. I’ll post this anyway]

Not sure what’s being ‘resolved’ in the title. Maybe the Dalek shows much resolution? Or is it Ryan’s beef with his father (which I’d completely forgotten about and don’t really care).

Anyway, it gets off to a really good start, sufficiently portentous (and a trace Game of Thrones-ish). Hope it holds up better than Ranskoor av Kolos.

I even like the slighty clumsy and awkward budding romance. [Why is there a reservoir under Sheffield Town Hall? Why not, undergound reservoirs gotta be under something.] And then of course the Thing escapes. I really hope nothing horrible happens to the nice, shy young couple. And that is certainly the biggest, nastiest-looking Dalekoid I have ever seen Don’t Touch It!!

At which point the Doctor & co appear. And (to my relief) nice girl seems to be unharmed (unless of course the Dalekoid got her when we weren’t looking). Graham: I assume it’s roaming around in the water. Doc: It looks like it slid down this wall and into the water! Well yeah, that’s what Graham just said. Clumsy editing? [By the way, no way are those sewers! But I can let that slide].

But all is obviously not well with nice girl. (Name of Lin).

The Tardis materialises in Graham’s front room and smashes a chair. I don’t think the Tardis has ever caused property damage before. I’d make a crack about women drivers but I think Clara and River Song have driven it before (and Me, and Missy have driven other Tardii) so…

Ryan’s dad rocks up. Somehow I have no interest in Ryan’s family relationships, I think it’s just too Coronation Street. (Yet I do with Yaz’s, and with Lin and Mitch who we only just met. I don’t know why).

So now Lin has this Dalekoid on her back, controlling her. (A bit like Donna in Turn Left?) At least it hasn’t turned her into a Dalek skin job, yet. Lin’s laptop must have damn good broadband to access the entire world’s defence capabilities – oh, and I see it brings up the Black Archive, how would Lin know the password for that? The Dalekoid has a spectacular influence on Lin’s driving – it obviously missed the training session on ‘how not to attract attention’.

Ryan giving his delinquent dad a hard time – [yawn. Fast forward… Sorry, Ryan fans]

So Mitch gets introduced to the Tardis. Is it just my regrettable mind or do those nodding columns look like some sort of sex toy for giant intergalactic octopuses?

“There’s been a Dalek buried on earth since the ninth century, waiting to revive”. We just figured that out for ourselves, don’t need to tell us the bleeding obvious, Doc. “Alien psychopath” says Graham. Oh, he meant the Dalek.

Da-Lin breaks into some secure facility and retrieves a bit more Dalek tech. And then obligingly tells the Doc its mission in accordance with Rules for Villains.

The Doc tries to enlist the help of UNIT but finds it’s been – suspended. (I always thought UNIT sounded a bit daft but it was classic Who, I thought at some point Chibbers had said he was going back to old Who? Maybe I got that wrong).

Intercut a touching moment with Graham and Ryan’s dad which almost interests me.

So then Da-Lin emulates the Doc’s episode 1 performance with welding gear in a workshop – except this is slightly more credible. Dalek ‘tank’ yeah, sonic screwdriver never. And Lin makes a valiant attempt to shake off the Dalek. And it seems that, once the Dalek finished its tank, it let her go. Why? Never mind, I’m quite happy about that.

The junkyard Dalek looks good, a lot better than Doc’s junkyard sonic. But surely this is the first time a sonic screwdriver has been able to block a Dalek blaster. Until the Doctor tells the Dalek who she is (which makes her equally unwise IMO, what does she think it’s going to do, self-destruct?) which inspires it to a spasm of Nick Briggs-oid ranting 🙂

So then they pick up Graham and Ryan’s dad (why?)

And the Dalek disposes of a small Army unit.

Then (I know just where this is going and it** got old a long time ago) Ryan’s dad suggests they can use his microwave oven to defeat it. “Help me get the element out – it’s metal”. Well, so’s the magnetron, what of it?
(** ‘It’ being the theme of ‘most useless character saving the day’. Srsly, why can’t useless characters just stay comfortably useless occasionally?)

So then the Dalek breaks into GCHQ. I know it’s called Government Communication HQ but that’s just a cover name for spooky signals interception and electronic spying, I think. I don’t think it controls all transmitters. Or the power grid. Nevermind. The Tardis materialises right after it.

“Stop the signal. Get off this planet.” Possibly the Dalek now has the capability to ‘get off this planet’ but where’s it going to go? Does it have intergalactic capacility? And more significantly, if it did, what’s to stop it finding another planet to terrorise and steer all of Dalekdom back to Earth anyway? And don’t the Daleks know about Earth already, since forever? Nevermind. Maybe its recently acquired military intelligence could be of use to the Daleks, if they really need it.

Not that the transformer out of a microwave could be modded to melt a metal sheet, but anyway where’s it getting the power from? Nevermind.

So then the Dalek (damn, that thing must move almost as fast as the Doctor) grabs Ryan’s dad. So then the Doctor dumps the Dalek into space and (wouldn’t you just know it, could see this coming like a freight train) Ryan grabs his dad’s hand and saves him. “Not bad for a kid with dyspraxia eh?” – well, if Ryan’s dyspraxia wasn’t the second most erratic thing in the universe. The most erratic being the Doctor’s rules – last week she wouldn’t let Graham knock off the blue menace, this week she seems perfectly prepared to literally off Ryan’s dad if it means getting rid of the Dalek.

So, not a bad episode. Had some good bits in it, and some tediously predictable ones. The Moff had the ability to surprise us that Chibbers seems to lack. I did like Lin and Mitch, pleased they survived (which, to give Chibbers credit, was by no means predictable).

[janetteB @janetteb]

@dentarthurdent Another great review. This was certainly more memorable than the previous couple of episodes, a 6.5 to a 7 out of ten episode. (maybe 7 is being too generous.) I do feel that Ryan and Graeme begin to feel overstretched as characters while Yaz has potential that is not tapped. (Maybe she finally gets to shine in the most recent series after the departure of Ryan and Graeme. i have yet to watch it.) The losing of Unit is one of those Chibnell things that really annoys me. He loves to kill off story elements, diminishing the Dr Who universe. I hope that Unit will return with RTD.

Cheers

Janette

 

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

@janetteb     Well thank you again   🙂     I’ve now watched Spyfall (pt 1) for the first time ever and I’m a much happier chappie.    I’l stick my impressions in the relevant forum.   Chibbers may have killed off UNIT, but (spoilers!) he’s revived a character who the Moff killed off.   No prizes for guessing who   🙂

 

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