The first one, “Space Babies” was alright, but felt too childish. “The Devils Chord” didn’t hit for me because they just didn’t have the budget for really being able to explore a higher level being of such power.
But Boom? Boom can be defeated by one simple question. “Where’s the Sonic?”
It’s never addressed, the Doctor never asks Ruby to go get it from the TARDIS if he doesn’t have it on him. And it’s never even explained that if she could go and get it, it wouldn’t effect the landmine.
It’s basic questions like this, that need to be answered in an episode like this. It would have taken a total of 4 sentences to cancel out the Sonic. But they never even mention it.
That’s just bad writing right there.
Plus the Doctor’s dialogue felt like it belonged more to Matt’s Doctor than Ncuti’s and DEAR GOD, Moffat cannot write children to save his life.
I’m hoping the season gets better because they’re 1.5 for three with me right now.
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Space babies was a poor opener and was obviously put there to draw in a younger crowd.
Devil’s chord had a lot of promise but never really hit the right note for me.
Boom like you said sonic -done they could have spent more time exploring this war ravaged planet and solving the mystery
My only beef with Space Babies was that they kept saying “SPACE BABIES!!!” over and over.
I have a theory that they were reinforcing, for the much younger crowd, that these were special babies who were very capable and independent in ways in which regular babies are not.
I thought he was going to sonic the mine and get on with the episode, but when I realised where things were going, the answer is simple - the sonic was in his pocket, but he couldn’t move to get it (or get Ruby to retrieve it) because that would shift his weight too much and set the mine off.
He couldn’t reach into his pocket, yet he could catch a compressed flesh tube?
He caught the compressed flesh tube to off-set putting his other foot down.
If the sonic is in his pocket, there’s no compensation.
fair enough of an explanation, but again… They didn’t say any of that
They did explicitly explain the catching of the tube with putting the foot down though.
Although how funny would it have been to make him do the episode on one foot? ;)
But it doesn’t explain the sonic.
You’re not the only one. I thought the Specials plus Church on Ruby Road were all great. Devils Chord has been the nearest so far, but still with issues. Boom…? A bit meh. Lots of Moffat tropes, and having Millie Gibson lie on the floor unconscious for 15 minutes felt typical of Moffat writing for female characters. Could have done with 5 or 10 minutes of trimming, and it wasn’t even that long. I thought I was just being cynical (I probably am).
Episode three started very strong for me (even if it did have the usual sledgehammer-to-the-head subtlety in its political messaging), but when Splice arrived at the landmine it went downhill so fast. Started with a really good premise, well thought-out logical steps of why everything happened as it did.
But in the second half, they just kept throwing more characters and more BS at the problem and trying to pull on audience emotions instead of telling a good story. Like, how does the Doctor holding a corpse mean it’s connected to the Internet? I am holding my phone and touching a microwave - is my microwave now connected to the Internet through me??
And gotta agree with OP, Moffat has apparently never met a child in his life. She must have the strongest faith ever to not even flinch after her dad dies. But hang on - why did she go looking for dad if it doesn’t matter whether he dies? And why was she upset when Ruby died?
Kids ruin everything. That kid ruined this episode.
Edit: also, what’s Moffat’s deal with medical treatment/hospitals? Did some nurse or doctor abuse him as a child? I get that some people don’t like going to the doctor or the hospitals, but every time Moffat writes a story that is even somewhat related to the subject, the doctors and nurses or medical personnel are always evil or monsters or something. In the first episodes of his era was Rory working as a nurse in a hospital that turned out to be a Cyberman factory.
Another is the two streams episode where Amy spends 30+ years dodging medical bots trying to inoculate her.
The last episode you mention wasn’t written by moffat.
I’ve only seen the specials and the space babies, and I’ve really loved the new direction. I’m reading a lot of negative reactions to the later episodes, so I’ll see how I fare with those.
I’ve heard speculation that the episodes aren’t being aired in the intended order, and that Devil’s Chord was brought forward and added as a second episode to coincide with Eurovision.
There’s definitely something that feels a bit disjointed about this season, and I’m still not sure why they seem determined to shoehorn Ncuti singing into every single episode (at the start of Boom I joked to my SO that if they manage to fit in a song into this one while he’s stuck on a landmine I’d be very surprised, and they actually did) but also it’s RDT, so having a season be completely bug shit bonkers and then tying it all up together at the end in a clever way would be pretty on brand.
I’m just gonna trust that he knows where he’s going with all this lol.
I liked space babies okay, but the devil’s chord was bad enough that my wife walked out in the middle of it and said I could watch it alone. I finished it up but it wasn’t good.
I haven’t seen any more yet, and I came on here hoping to see that they got better. I will watch anyway.
Not Fantastic.
It’s so bad. 🙈
Wild Blue Yonder is the only watchable RTD2 episode so far IMO. Haven’t seen Boom. May not bother.
Haven’t seen Boom yet but maybe that’s because the season isn’t hitting for me.
I enjoyed the 60th and the Christmas specials, but the first 2 episodes of this season were just fine. They weren’t terrible like the Chibnal era but they also weren’t as good as RTD’s first era.
I’ve not had much to do this weekend so it’s not like I couldn’t watch the episode, in fact I felt like watching Doctor Who earlier and I instead watched some S1 even though Boom is still to be watched.
I really hope the season gets better as the show has so much potential for more great stories, they just need to be made by the right people
