He’s fine as a doctor, but the stories this season have been awful. The show has a huge budget, great actors, but it feels like they’re being written by ChatGPT.
I love his energy as the Doctor, but yeah some of the stories are not great. Space babies was painfully bad, while returning to the planet Midnight was pretty cool. So far it seems a lot like Jodie’s run where her charisma was the only thing carrying some terrible writing.
I really didn’t like the Midnight story. You can’t go “behind” someone, but you can safely go partially behind them. The set design on that episode was annoying too. Aliss is perched exactly in the middle of a circular room, and never moves from that spot.
The Robot Revolution was also a really annoying episode. They had an opportunity to make Budd a three-dimensional character who was realistic in becoming a misogynist. Instead they showed him as normal, then suddenly revealed him to be horrible, and did a little flashback. It felt like they were checking boxes rather than developing a real character. It also had this really weird 1950s sci-fi vibe but with actual people getting actually disintegrated in a not-very Dr. Who way.
Lux was fun, but that nod to 1950s racism was really weird. I was watching it thinking “there’s no way that a black man and a brown woman would be simply accepted in 1950s Miami”. But, I was prepared to say “ok, they’re just ignoring the racism” and was prepared to suspend my disbelief. But, then they included the racism, but only in a “dream sequence”? That both acknowledges that the racism was massive in the 1950s, but somehow simultaneously pretends that in the “real world” it didn’t exist?
And then in the 4th episode, we have… yet another psychotic boyfriend. Out of the 4 episodes so far, 2 of them have revolved around asshole boyfriends? That one also annoyed me that they let the asshole boyfriend get a powerful machine gun and shoot on full auto for something like a minute and nobody was apparently worried that he might hit them. Also, the Doctor going off on the boyfriend while he is in prison felt very out of character for the doctor. Sure, sometimes the doctor gives speeches in tense moments in an attempt to prevent disaster. But, he has never taunted someone who was captured before. Much more doctorish would have been to attempt to reform him.
Instead they showed him as normal, then suddenly revealed him to be horrible, and did a little flashback.
I mean he was kind of horrible from the very first scene, with the “miss” bullshit and his comment about girls being bad at math. He was never showed as normal.
But, then they included the racism, but only in a “dream sequence”? That both acknowledges that the racism was massive in the 1950s, but somehow simultaneously pretends that in the “real world” it didn’t exist?
Again, no. They acknowledged that the diner was segregated - it just so happened that the employee and grieving mother didn’t care. There were people who weren’t fans of segregation at that time.
But, he has never taunted someone who was captured before. Much more doctorish would have been to attempt to reform him.
“The Family of Blood” anyone? “The Christmas Invasion”?
Honestly, I couldn’t disagree more - I think the season so far has been quite solid.
In any case, this article is about marketing and promotional opportunities for Disney.
