"Lots of planets have a Yorkshire!"
How would you begin the most anticipated BBC drama of the year? A programme that has been the subject of ridicule and scorn as well as feverish hope for at least the last 10 months, but realistically since the announcement of a revolutionary new incumbent in the blue box shook the fan-base to its very core?
Well, if you're Chris Chibnall you would do it by showing a grown man being taught to ride a bicycle by his grandmother and Bradley Walsh off of "He's Pasquale, I'm Walsh". The man in question is Ryan St Clair, a name that made me think of Roger Moore in tangerine casuals at a St Moritz lido, and Ryan has dyspraxia, and that's why he has problems riding a bike. We don't know that yet, though. What we do know is that Bradley is his Grandmother's second husband, that Ryan and Bradley don't see eye to eye and that Ryan's nan is an absolute darling and therefore doomed from the very get go. Because Doctor Who may have changed but it hasn't changed that much.
Ryan is ultimately so frustrated with his inability to deal with life without the stabilisers on (metaphor!) that he chucks his bike off a hill, thus setting off a chain of events that lead to a light retreading of The Predator and The Terminator, but set in Sheffield in semi-darkness.
To say this opening episode is light on plot is like saying 50 Shades of Grey is a bit scanty in the old wardrobe department: there is manifestly nothing going on. This episode is solely about getting the gang together in one place at one time, which is probably an unusual M.O. for a time traveller, but for the purposes of rebooting a TV show it works well. There are ties that bind here: even the final team member, provisional police officer Yaz, went to primary school with Ryan. This is a family affair.
So when the Doctor drops in (having fallen from space, through the earth's atmosphere and through the roof of a moving train - don't worry, she's fine. Er, regeneration energy or something, probably) the gang is very much all here.
So, Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor. What is she like? She's fine. She was always going to be fine. She is not at her best in this episode: she has to do a lot of heavy lifting, a lot of exposition, position herself as the Doctor and deal with the tiresomeness of post regeneration trauma. Seriously? Of all the things to uphold as tradition in revolutionary new Who: fannying around and saying "ooh I dunno who I am" and "my body is rebooting". Really? Remember that scene in "Hell Bent" where the Doctor asks the old, white male general which regeneration he is on before shooting him and he immediately regenerates into a black woman and just gets on with it? That. Do that. Don't hang around in a dead man's clothes and staring at your hand like it's just had its Ready-Brek.
But yeah. She was great. Goofy, upbeat. David Tennant before he was "shorry" every five minutes. And she'll get better. Bradley Walsh was also great. You always knew he was going to be the Billie Piper of the show. When she was cast in 2005 great swathes of mouth-breathing Whovians swore it was over before it had even begun because the BBC had cast a failed pop star as the companion "just so people would watch it", which is, of course, the opposite of what they wanted.
She was the show. There was a reason that first episode of new Who was called "Rose" and she was it.
Bradley Walsh as cantankerous coward Graham is going to be the heart of this new series. A grieving man trapped in a box with a grandchild who dislikes him, and a strange, mad woman who bosses him around - just like his wife used to do. There is going to be complex emotional leakage all over the shop. You'll need a mop and bucket just to deal with the tears.
The music was great, The Sheffieldness of it was good. (I've been to Sheffield. Didn't like it.)The Doctor's undermining of the boring alien warrior called "Tim Shaw" was funny. The tooling-up montage was appropriately A - Team (a plan was coming together - not sure what it was but it was a nice Quatermass reference in the end). The charity shop dressing up sequence was actually lovely.
The show is going to be fine. But maybe just fine. Chris Chibnall has a history of delivering mediocre episodes of Doctor Who and, in his first outing as show runner, he has delivered a mediocre episode of Doctor Who. Everything that was wrong with this first effort is down to him: the lack of story, the clumsy exposition, the garlanding of misfortune as characterisation, the witlessness of it all. He deserves kudos for some bold decisions and this is very definitely going to be a new kind of Who: cut off from its history, cut off from the old, too familiar villains, (a cosy enemy is a friend) and removed from the strain of adolescent masculine angst that crept in with Christopher Eccleston, reached a peak with Tennant and never quite went away through Smith and Capaldi's wonderful tenures.
This could genuinely be a whole new show. I hope some of the other writers on it have the chops to make it so.
Well, if you're Chris Chibnall you would do it by showing a grown man being taught to ride a bicycle by his grandmother and Bradley Walsh off of "He's Pasquale, I'm Walsh". The man in question is Ryan St Clair, a name that made me think of Roger Moore in tangerine casuals at a St Moritz lido, and Ryan has dyspraxia, and that's why he has problems riding a bike. We don't know that yet, though. What we do know is that Bradley is his Grandmother's second husband, that Ryan and Bradley don't see eye to eye and that Ryan's nan is an absolute darling and therefore doomed from the very get go. Because Doctor Who may have changed but it hasn't changed that much.
Ryan is ultimately so frustrated with his inability to deal with life without the stabilisers on (metaphor!) that he chucks his bike off a hill, thus setting off a chain of events that lead to a light retreading of The Predator and The Terminator, but set in Sheffield in semi-darkness.
To say this opening episode is light on plot is like saying 50 Shades of Grey is a bit scanty in the old wardrobe department: there is manifestly nothing going on. This episode is solely about getting the gang together in one place at one time, which is probably an unusual M.O. for a time traveller, but for the purposes of rebooting a TV show it works well. There are ties that bind here: even the final team member, provisional police officer Yaz, went to primary school with Ryan. This is a family affair.
So when the Doctor drops in (having fallen from space, through the earth's atmosphere and through the roof of a moving train - don't worry, she's fine. Er, regeneration energy or something, probably) the gang is very much all here.
So, Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor. What is she like? She's fine. She was always going to be fine. She is not at her best in this episode: she has to do a lot of heavy lifting, a lot of exposition, position herself as the Doctor and deal with the tiresomeness of post regeneration trauma. Seriously? Of all the things to uphold as tradition in revolutionary new Who: fannying around and saying "ooh I dunno who I am" and "my body is rebooting". Really? Remember that scene in "Hell Bent" where the Doctor asks the old, white male general which regeneration he is on before shooting him and he immediately regenerates into a black woman and just gets on with it? That. Do that. Don't hang around in a dead man's clothes and staring at your hand like it's just had its Ready-Brek.
But yeah. She was great. Goofy, upbeat. David Tennant before he was "shorry" every five minutes. And she'll get better. Bradley Walsh was also great. You always knew he was going to be the Billie Piper of the show. When she was cast in 2005 great swathes of mouth-breathing Whovians swore it was over before it had even begun because the BBC had cast a failed pop star as the companion "just so people would watch it", which is, of course, the opposite of what they wanted.
She was the show. There was a reason that first episode of new Who was called "Rose" and she was it.
Bradley Walsh as cantankerous coward Graham is going to be the heart of this new series. A grieving man trapped in a box with a grandchild who dislikes him, and a strange, mad woman who bosses him around - just like his wife used to do. There is going to be complex emotional leakage all over the shop. You'll need a mop and bucket just to deal with the tears.
The music was great, The Sheffieldness of it was good. (I've been to Sheffield. Didn't like it.)The Doctor's undermining of the boring alien warrior called "Tim Shaw" was funny. The tooling-up montage was appropriately A - Team (a plan was coming together - not sure what it was but it was a nice Quatermass reference in the end). The charity shop dressing up sequence was actually lovely.
The show is going to be fine. But maybe just fine. Chris Chibnall has a history of delivering mediocre episodes of Doctor Who and, in his first outing as show runner, he has delivered a mediocre episode of Doctor Who. Everything that was wrong with this first effort is down to him: the lack of story, the clumsy exposition, the garlanding of misfortune as characterisation, the witlessness of it all. He deserves kudos for some bold decisions and this is very definitely going to be a new kind of Who: cut off from its history, cut off from the old, too familiar villains, (a cosy enemy is a friend) and removed from the strain of adolescent masculine angst that crept in with Christopher Eccleston, reached a peak with Tennant and never quite went away through Smith and Capaldi's wonderful tenures.
This could genuinely be a whole new show. I hope some of the other writers on it have the chops to make it so.
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