Logline
When robots from Outer Space kidnap Nurse Belinda Chandra, the Doctor embarks on an epic intergalactic quest to get his new friend back home to Earth.
Written by: Russell T Davies
Directed by: Peter Hoar
The time loop has left me confused. I’m not entirely sure what happened there. I guess this is one of those paradoxy things that doesn’t have a beginning, but that whole plot point was quite unsatisfying.
Poking fun at those fake “buy a plot of land on the moon”, “name a star after you” deeds is great. I never understood them.
AI/AL generator just seemed a wee bit too on the nose for “things in the zeitgeist right now”, but the reveal did get a chuckle out of me. Definite cyberman vibes here, and at one point he/it used the word “conversion”, I wonder if some draft had cybermen in it or if that’s just doctor who script language leaking through. I like the design of the armed robots: they look a bit childish and gamey like giant toys, but it fits thematically if ultimately they were designed by an incel manboy.
Interesting idea behind the brain-computer interface being buggy - computers think in powers of 2, 8 is a common grouping, and it’s easy to make an off-by-one bug. If someone has managed to grab a subtitle track, it would be great to scan through and check every ninth word for the whole episode, and see if there are more hidden messages. I love when shows do that.
A minor logic issue around the names used - We’re not called sunkind, nor do we live on planet human, so I’m not sure why everything was missbelindachandra-xyz, but logic aside it was amusing. Also, I guess Sasha 55 was a clone? That’s usually what name-number means in sci-fi, but we never got a real explanation of that. For the rest of the season if they decide to just keep going by “the Nurse” and “the Doctor”, I would love that.
Given what’s been in the news lately about companies like 23andme, and the privacy associated with DNA, when the doctor scanned her, my first reaction was “oh, that’s a bit weird, does he really just DNA-scan everyone he comes across?”, so for her to immediately call him out on it was fantastic.
I like that the Nurse’s character is wary of men, given her previous bad relationship, and it’s good to have a character willing to call the Doctor on his BS. Even acting with the best of intentions, a man in a position of power over a woman can’t be doing things that make her feel uncomfortable, like basically kidnapping her. I really hope that in the next episode she keeps this up and doesn’t immediately forgive and forget.
On disintegrating that poor cat: Don’t hurt the cat. I hate it when animals get hurt even in fiction. Wreck the humans and bots all you want, fine, but not the poor animals. I am annoyed that there wasn’t some sort of timey wimey explanation that fixes it and brings it back to life, it just gets played off for laughs with a “went to live on a farm”.
Some issues, but a pretty good opener. 7/10
I agree that by the end of this season we need to know
A) where the time fissure came from, and whether it has to do with the TARDIS being repelled from 24th May Earth. “I fixed that!” Sure you did, Doctor 🙂
B) who this man was that told the Doctor Belinda would be important. Probably himself, who else does he take that seriously?
C) how the star certificate was sent 5000 years into the past, and
D) that the cat is restored.
Is it weird that this episode marks the show’s second stalkery, gaslighting wannabe boyfriend named Alan (first one in “Fugitive of the Judoon”)?
Is this a British stereotype I didn’t know of?
#notallalans
I thoroughly enjoyed this, a promising start to the season. Did the main story feel a little rushed? Yes, but that got us the setup for the rest of the season arc, #getBelindahome — and a bit of TARDIS chat over the console. I’ve missed that, and I hope we see more of it.
I’m a little irked by the flashy visuals that must have taken a good chunk out of the budget. Missbelindachandra One looked so shiny and superfluously detailed that you’d think it was rendered for a cinema screen. And the colour grading, particularly in the rebel bunker, looked ironically like the gold tinted, oversaturated colour schemes of “AI” generated imagery.
[Edit: To be clear, I find it odd that the current priority is to make each episode look like an overproduced blockbuster movie, when the same budget could feasibly go into more episodes. But that’s my pet peeve.]
Is that going to spoil a perfectly fine DW episode for me? Nooope.
One thing I forgot to mention: is it just me, or was there a very confusing edit in the middle of the scene in which the rebel base was under attack. They were taking fire, shit was going crazy, and then…it was dead calm while we saw Belinda reactivating the floor polisher. Which I guess was a flashback?
I honestly didn’t catch any discontinuity there. I’ll try and spot it when I rewatch the episode.
Watching it back, I think I was bumped by the fact that Belinda decides to turn herself in while the area is being shelled, and they then cut immediately to her going to the polishbot, but the attack is over by then.
Yeah, there’s not much conveying “whew, that’s it for now” apart from the change of background soundscape. A small oopsie, you’re right.
I thought that was a very solid season opener - it certainly surpassed my modest expectations.
I didn’t think much of the retrofuturistic stylings in the previews, but the robots won me over with their absolutely ridiculous arms.
It’s interesting that the Doctor was on the planet for six months - wasn’t that also the length of time he and Ruby went on adventures between “Space Babies” and “The Devil’s Chord”. This episode has to take place after “Boom”, though, so it might be a coincidence. It’s just in my head because it does sound like we’re going to get a glimpse of those six missing months later this season.
Making the villain a manosphere chud was rather timely (or maybe just evergreen over the past decade or so), especially on the heels of the discourse around Netflix’s “Adolescence”.
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