Celebrating the greatest show in the galaxy's 60th birthday, with a run-down of every TV story from all eras worst to best across 315 days up until the anniversary on November 23rd 2023 for all new fans arriving from the 'Whoniverse' on BBC i-player. Remember, a Dr Who story a day keeps the entropy away! Sister site to music review site 'Alan's Album Archives' (www.alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com) and sci-fi book series 'Kindred Spirits' (www.kindredspiritbooks.blogspot.com)
(Season 12, Dr 13, Graham Ryan and Yaz, 1/3/2020, producer/showrunner: Chris Chibnall, writer: Chris Chibnall, director: Jamie Magnus Stone)
Rank: 311
In an emoji: đź
'Top o' the morning to ya - although morning is relative to the planet you're on. Whoops, why did I say that? Anyway I'd like some potatoes and fish fingers with custard please. Eh? What did I just say?'
âSorry, whatâs happening now?!â A
lot of the bottom of our rankings list makes for bad television: stories that
are bland, or confusing, or look woefully under budget, or if theyâre really
unlucky, all three. That in itself is forgivable: when you have a series thatâs
pushing boundaries and trying to do something different every week there are
going to be times when things go wrong. Thereâs a special pool of episodes
though that are fundamentally flawed not just in how television works but in
how âDoctor Whoâ works. Thereâs a colossal misunderstanding at the heart of
âThe Timeless Childâ arc over what this series is all about, one that causes
fans to come out into a cold sweat and engage in online wars greater than any
fighting seen in the series about whether or not events in this story can
possibly be true. You see, the Doctor is not like other heroes in fiction: they
might come from another world but fundamentally theyâre as âhumanâ and flawed
as aliens get, running round saving the universe with no special powers beyond
their instinct, their intelligence, a sonic screwdriver and â most of the timeâ
some friends. To the people they save and inspire theyâre brilliant of course,
but fundamentally theyâre flawed and make mistakes and, amongst their own kind,
theyâre nothing special at all (much is made of the fact that the Doctor barely
scarped a pass at the Timelord academy â the second time round). For much of
the audience the doctor isnât just someone you wait to come along and save you,
but someone you want to emulate, to copy, because even when everything is
against them and theyâre fighting foes with super strength he or she still
wins, not because of who he or she is, but because of what he or she does.
Very occasionally theyâre seen to lose - usually through arrogance, or recklessness,
or by accidentally encouraging others to act like them. This isnât your Superman with
abilities we can only dream of, or a God with powers beyond our understanding,
or even a figure with impossible technology at their disposal, just a mad man
(or woman) with a time-travelling box that doesnât quite work properly.
The reason this two parter comes
lowest on our list, quite beyond the fact that itâs a slow and sluggish,
ineptly made and confusing bit of television, is that it overwrites what we
thought we knew for no good reason. By making the Doctor out to be the
âspecialâ child, the founder of Gallifrey that had their memory wiped and has
lived for countless regenerations beyond when we met them, doesnât give this
show of impossible elasticity more scope â it gives it less. It sets things in
stone that have been successfully juggled in ambiguity for 57 years. It makes
all their battles down the years seem inevitable and easy because of who they
are rather than what they did. It makes everyone who ever ran at the sound of
the doctorâs name act as if they did so because of the âlegendâ rather than
what the Doctor can actually do. Making the Doctor out
to be a 'gifted' child, the one who brought the power of regeneration to his
home race no less, certainly explains why The Master has always been so jealous
of him/her (although
itâs a bit sad it changed the Masterâs fifty year arc of rivalry and need for control,
of good versus evil, into a simple fit of jealousy) but
it doesn't explain why none of the other timelords reckoned on him much, or why
nobody has thought to tell the Doctor this before now. Most of all, it changes our
relationship with our favourite character: if they can be the founder of worlds
and be the accidental reason timelords can regenerate, what other super power
are they going to pull out their pocket the next time theyâre in a scrape? Arenât
they just âone of themâ now not âone of usâ?It makes the person we wanted to
grow up to be some day, someone we thought we knew really well, distant and impossible
to relate to. âDr Whoâ is no longer a show about how good people trying to do
their best can save the universe, but how some people are born to greatness and
the rest of us are just pigging ordinary (some of us more than others).
There are, of course, fans who
like it (there are some fans who like anything). Who enjoy the fact that the Doctor
has a bigger past to enjoy and who explain away the problems the âTimeless
Childâ arc causes because her memory of who she was is wiped anyway, so what she
did in the past she still did the way we saw on screen. But that sounds like a
fudge to me: at her core this Doctor was different and even if her impulses
were subconscious, nevertheless the thought that sheâd lived that long and been
ârescuedâ is in there somewhere. This story changes other things too, of
course. So, Jodie Whittaker isn't the 13th Doctor then. OK, I can
live with that, itâs just a number after all and The War Doctor rather confused
the numbering system anyway, never mind
David Tennantâs spare limbs. But wait, William Hartnell isn't the 1st Doctor,
despite the dozens of times he referred to himself as 'the original', his
'earliest self' etc? I'm not sure I can live with that - it changes the entire
way we approach those early years. It matters so fundamentally to the character arc of
the Doctor that William Hartnell be the first doctor, old-yet-young, inexperienced
in the way of the universe and with rotten people skills. tetchily looking down
their nose at other cultures before learning that, actually, they can learn a
lot from the people they travel with, that they can feel good by doing good for
other people. I wouldnât trade the first seasonâs growth and development for
anything, not even Jo Martin or the faces seen in âBrian Of Morbiusâ as actual
canon doctors. Thatâs a fundamental misunderstanding too by the way: in that
story from 1976 the 4th Dr challenges Morbius to a âmindmeldingâ
contest to be sent back through their regenerations and some people we donât
know (played by members of the production team for a laugh) flash up on screen
while Morbius giggles manically and the Doctor slumps to the floor: evidence to
some fans that the Doctor had lives before Hartnell. Hang on though: âThe
Timeless Childrenâ makes a point that the Doctor doesnât know any of this, so
why doesnât Tom Baker go âblimey, who are they then?â I always took them to be
Morbiusâ past lives anyway â even if heâs ranting away to himself quote happily
as if heâs winning thatâs perfectly in character for a timelord living in
denial and too stubborn to admit defeat until the inevitable (the machine
theyâre using explodes before we find out either way). How typical then: it
feels as if this whole story was written to explain away a tiny bit of
continuity, which only a few people will get, which is most probably wrong
anyway. Most of all this plot arc changes how they behave going forward: from
now on, for the rest of the time Dr Who is on the air, they know in their heart
of hearts that theyâre âspecialâ whether they believe it or not. And thatâs not
what Doctor Who is about at all: this is a series where everyone is special,
where every character we meet can live and grow and change, even the misguided
ones.
If this arc ruins things for the
series then, does it at least make for an interesting story? No. Weâre deep into the age now where you have to see
stories multiple times for the âoh I seeâ conclusion to make sense of what came
before it, to pick up on the clues that were laid out but you missed through
obfuscation and sleight of hand. To do that, though you need to make a story
interesting and well-made enough to make you want to go back through it all a
second time, to keep you going through the moments of pure confusion, the
belief that youâre in safe storytelling hands that will give you a reward that
makes the hard work of puzzling things through worth it. This story does none
of that. For the most part âAscensionâ follows that old Who trope of the last
survivors of a planet battling for their lives against the Cybermen, a base
under siege with the twist that the base is a whole planet but there are even
less humans to wipe out than normal. The humans arenât that interesting or
likeable, but a fight to the death to save humanity is at least what Dr Who is
about. Interspersed with that, though we get shots of a child named Brendon in
rural Ireland inserted randomly, even in the middle of some quite tense scenes
in the main plot, not so much threaded into the action so much as sprinkled, so
that we havenât got a clue what on Gallifrey is going on until right near the
end (spoilers: itâs the Doctor, when they were first born, in hiding, a âcover
storyâ for the truth. Eh what? Why does the Doctor need a cover story when they
arenât going to remember any of it anyway? Why are they in Ireland of all
places? Why do the timelords, a race for whom Earthlings are nobodies and wonât
even let them into the planet, know about Ireland? Was it picked at random or part
of the Doctorâs long relationship with our planet? And if its still deep in
their subconscious memory then how come weâve had three doctors with a Scottish
accent and no Irish ones?! In reality I fear Ireland was chosen due to a second
misunderstanding, of a joke in âHuman Natureâ where the 10th Dr says
he comes from Gallifrey and was asked âis that in Ireland?â because itâs the
only place a Brit is likely to have travelled from with a name you didnât
recognise back in 1913. It was only ever meant as a joke, not a plot point. Thereâs
nothing to link these scenes to the Doctor for an entire episode and a half, no
clue, not even a half-clue and no appearance of the lad in Ireland once weâve
worked it all out to go âah, I see!â In fact, given that heâs living happily
with authoritarian parents (one of whom is a policeman and trying to become one
themselves) and the Doctor doesnât even think about looking at the stars or
show curiosity in anything outside their own lives, there isnât even the sort
of common character trait the Doctor shares that wouldnât give the game away
(because lots of other people could have it too). Even the name isnât the clue it
might have been: whatâs wrong with them being named âTimâ for âTimelordâ or
âKasterâ for âKasterberousâ (home postcode) or something? Where did the name
âBrendonâ come from? And then they have Brendan the policeman fall off a cliff
and come back to life â but not in a way weâve ever seen the Doctor do
(shouldnât he have regenerated? Heâs not indestructible. If the Doctor could do
this every time heâd have survived the fall in âLogopolisâ from a similar
height for starters and been less of a wuss in quite a few other stories. This
is an annoying false clue: I had money on the lad being someone in the series
who actually is indestructible, like Captain Jack Harkness). And then they let
him live till retirement and wipe his memory. Why then? Whatâs so special they
have to come back when heâs 65? We never find out. And on top of that, like
many a two-parter in the modern series, weâre following one plot on one story
and then get roped into a second suddenly and rather violently just because
thereâs a cliffhanger. Believe it or not things get worse when The master turns
up and whisks The Doctor off to Gallifrey.
In theory this should feel like
the sort of thing Dr Who is so gifted at, shifting perspectives in space and
time because every revelation is relative to what you know about the rest of
the story and all time is linked, dots on a line, with cause and effect. In
practice it just looks as if your TVâs been possessed by a drunken weeping
angel and started channel hopping. There was a time, halfway into âAscensionâ
on first broadcast, when I seriously thought someone had broken into the BBC
and started playing with transmitter masts again (the way a repeat of âHorror
Of Fang Rockâ in America got interrupted by a kid in a Max Headroom mask), its
that intrusive. When the revelation is half-made to the Doctor about who they
are its left to us to join the dots and frankly half the picture was never
sketched in. Even when we do get that revelation it isnât a satisfying end to
something weâve been slowly working out for ourselves, but something The Master
tells us, pontificating at length to the Doctor about something he knows and
she doesnât (with no reason given why heâs announcing this to her now and not
in, say, any of their previous thirty odd encounters). There isnât even enough
made of the spoken plotline of The Master feeling jealous at the Doctor being
âspecialâ without knowing it, because he so desperately wants to be (instead
youâre asked to try to work that out based on past stories, just a bit of a
rant about âhaving part of you inside meâ â something thatâs particularly hard
to do after this story as it changes everything we thought we knew about all
past stories). What should be a huge moment in Who history, a revelation
that reverberates throughout space and time and at the very least provides a
huge climax to Season 12, ends up being...underwhelming, as Jodie stares with
big eyes while The Master natters on and on and on (lifeâs too short for this:
the Doctor might suddenly have unlimited lifespans but we donât). Thereâs no drama made out of the
revelation, no great climax, it just is: the Doctor turns up, gets told it all
while looking unhappy, then escapes at the end while someone else blows up
Gallifrey without doing anything herself.
One of the worst aspects of the
13th Drâs run is that sheâs a character that things happen to
without making things happen. Thatâs not true of every story and its not unique
(the 5th Dr did that a lot too) but it happens in this story a lot.
If your whole plot revolves around the revelation that your lead character is
âspecialâ, now is not the best time to have her standing around while other people
blow her up or natter to her about her origins. âThis is not a discussion! says
the Doctor early on in the first part, but thatâs the problem: this isnât dialogue
its monologue. She never gets to do anything clever, she never gets to react to
other people being clever, sheâs either running or standing still and reacting,
never doing. When The Master suddenly sticks The Doctor in a âparalysis fieldâ
to keep her imprisoned and later sticks her in a void for good measure it doesnât
make any discernible difference as itâs not like sheâs done anything other than
stand there anyway. Itâs a habit of Chris Chibnall as a writer to keep the
doctor out of trouble until sheâs needed by the plot, something no other writer
ever did, but in this story thereâs no point when the plot needs her to do
anything other than listen, for two hours; at least when the 2nd Dr
is on the fringe of things heâs always looking on and making notes while seeing
how the characters do: the 13th Dr is always being imprisoned or
trapped or got out the way. Itâs not just the doctor either. So much of this
story is static, people talking about the world ending and hiding but not
actually doing much about it until the final act, the only action sequences
coming right at the start and right at the end. Nothing much happens in this
story at all, for all the lines about how âthis is going to change everythingâ.
A good chunk, maybe twenty minutes of the second episode, is The Master
narrating a flashback at length in near-enough real time, as if heâs reading out a Jackanory
story, while what we get on screen is a load of silhouettes and shadows that
donât make for the best television. Itâs the sort of thing that feels like a
computer game, where exposition in small chunks is inevitable because you donât
get told much when youâre running for your life and shooting at things, but
instead of small chunks it goes on and on and on and you canât just skip it to
get to some action, because there really isnât any. When The Master says âthis
is going to hurtâ he means it as a threat to the Doctor, but it feels more like
a threat to the viewer. Things lift when Jo Martin turns up for the second time
(sheâs a much more interesting Doctor than Jodie Whittaker, authoritarian and
charismatic), but itâs annoying that the Dr weâre following ends up wimping out
like Susan in those first season adventures and has to be geed up by someone
else to survive. Weâre meant to feel for the Doctor, how scared she is, how
everything she thought she knew about herself has changed, but the dialogue
isnât up to it and Jodie Whittaker isnât a strong enough actress to convey
everything she needs to in the few lines she gets. The Doctorâs not even a
character worth caring about in this story - what could potentially be her last
words to her companions are her yelling at Yaz âget off!â
The Masterâs a one-dimensional
villain too, having lost all the extra characterisation and surprise offered
him in âSpyfallâ and spends most of this story laughing at the Doctor and
mocking her. Sacha Derwan is one of those actors whose as good as his script
and of course this one is bad so he has nowhere to go and canât sell some of
the clunkiest bits of exposition in the series, without any moments that make
him seem like âThe Masterâ rather than some other gloating enemy. This used to
be one of the best characters in Dr Who, multifaceted, unpredictable, a force
to be reckoned with, a cool calm exterior enabling him to mix with anyone and
anything but with scary rage underneath, very much the Doctorâs equal. This oneâs
a nitwit who doesnât even keep a lookout for the inevitable twist when things
are going well. âLook how low youâve brought me Doctorâ he says at one point.
Quite.
The companions donât fare any
better, mind. Graham and Yaz are an interesting pairing weâve never really seen
before. Unfortunately they spend most of the story stuck in a cave with the
humans, gee-ing each other up in a âyeehaâ way, even though for all their talk
of courage and facing implacable foes head on they get scared and run when the
script has delayed long enough to need them to do something. âThatâs not luck
sunshine, you never give up!â says Graham in one of the more cringe-worthy
lines, a moment thatâs meant to make you celebrate human resourcefulness but is
so out of touch with what these survivors have seen and lived through already
that just makes you want to see the Cybermen win and convert them quick. Yaz
and Graham choose some mighty weird moments to have their heart to heart talks
too. Graham barely knows Yaz and anyone else in his situation would be worrying
about their son, but in one of the single worst scenes in Dr Who history Graham
pours out to Yaz how âspecialâ he thinks she is because sheâs âan impressive
young woman never thrown by anything, always fighting â I know you think the
Doctor is the most impressive woman youâve ever met but no, you are!â Quite
apart from being sugary enough to bring on diabetes its so out of character:
Grahamâs a cynic and even though he has emotions deep down in there somewhere, fright would be a more natural reaction, even reassurance,
not lovey dovey treacle like this. Yaz has shown absolutely no bravery in the
story whatsoever and not much across her two series. And how does she receive
this outpouring of affection? By smugly accepting it, without saying thankyou
or passing the compliment on (âYouâre not such a bad human yourself eitherâ is
the closest she comes â and no âIâm from Yorkshire, thatâs practically a love
letterâ doesnât cut it. Yaz is, believe it or not, the most emotional one out
the trio and the most likely to say this gushy stuff, not ignore it). Yaz isnât
the substitute hero Chris Chibnall thinks we need now we donât think of the
Doctor the same way, sheâs a pain in the neck like few other companions before
her. The Tardis team have been through bigger scrapes than this, so why have
this chat now anyway? Except that itâs the end of their last full series
together and we need an âend of term reportâ and Chibnall might not get another
chance to say it â but like many of the worst scripts of the 13th Dr
era weâre told it, this isnât something earned or learnt through emotional
responses to big events, it just happens. Ryan, though, amazingly is worse, the
lesser aspects of Mel Turlough and Adric stuck together. Heâs absolutely
useless, even more than normal, but not endearingly so like Harry or Jo, but
arrogantly, expecting other people to give their life up for him even though he
keeps getting in the way. He spends the first episode getting separated and not
being able to keep up with the others and the second skulking around on his
own. Hereâs no way heâd survive a Cybermen attack. Iâm amazed he can tie his own shoelaces. Whatâs that he can? Well,
thatâs surprise because most dyspraxics
canât. One of the character traits that really bugs me is how his dyspraxia
comes and goes, depending on whether Chibnall needs it or not: its treated like
a mental condition, based around confidence and effort, but it isnât, its physical.
The synapses in Ryanâs brain donât connect properly, which mean he lacks
co-ordination and doesnât know where his limbs are to the pinpoint accuracy of
ânormalâ people, which means for instance heâs too slow at running at the start
so gets caught, but he should be hopeless at fine motor skills too. Thereâs no
way heâd be able to magically lob a cyber-grenade with supreme precision and
accuracy simply because he âwantedâ to hard enough. As a fellow sufferer, take
it from me, you canât turn dyspraxia off and on and if you could that would be
a super-power Iâd take over regeneration or time-travel: that frustration at being
trapped in a body that doesnât work is
in itself calling out for dramatic purposes but no, we just get Ryan being a
pest then a hero (trust me, thereâs nothing that says you can be both).
Chibnall wrote Ryan in this character trait after seeing an undisclosed family
member struggle with dyspraxia. Stories like this one suggest it isnât a family
member he knows well. Maddeningly, there is a good
story in there somewhere. The idea of humanity coming down to its last seven
stragglers is such an old-Who concept that itâs great to see it in the new
series (even if, worryingly, the way its realised on screen â in a quarry
âmakes it look as cheap as the show ever did). In all 57 years up to this point weâve had
endless invasions of Gallifrey by Daleks and even a couple by the Vardans and
Sontarons, but never the showâs second most prolific baddies. They look rather
good skulking around the smoking ruins of the Drâs home planet in a way the
Daleks never could and while theyâve not been used well at all since the series
revival this story comes closest in many ways: theyâre early battle-scarred
cybermen who still have some emotions left and know the value of fear, closer
to human. They look amazing in Gallifreyan ruffs too when theyâre converted, a
very striking image thatâs very memorable. The cliffhanger, of armies of
Cybermen marching, is goose-pimply good (and to be fair to him does show that
Chris Chibnall has some understanding of how Dr Who works).Had this been a straight up
Cybermen story, with no Master or timeless anybody, it might have been quite
strong in fact. but even thatâs undercut by The Master materialising out of
nowhere and leaving The Cybemen to skulk around at the back of shot not doing
much (as odd as it is to see The Doctor not doing anything, its even odder for
them to be so subservient). Even beyond the Timeless Child fiasco, though,
thereâs a lot this story gets wrong. The plot of turning dead
people, even timelords, into cybermen against their will is still icky, though
this episode is admittedly not the first or the worst to do that (see âDeath In Heavenâ). The finale too is
deeply, woefully poor as characters we havenât seen in a long while end up
saving the day and solving everything (sort of) by blowing things up, something
they could have done hour earlier. Hardly the first Dr Who story to do this and
it's not the Dr doing it after all, but it comes so soon after a speech that
blowing things up isn't the right way to go about things it does seem a bit odd
when that turns out to be the 'right' thing to do after all. Even then, though, it would have
been a lesser story simply because the dialogue is so awful: nobody learns
anything in this story the way they do in good drama, there are no chains of
events with consequences and ripples, nobody grows, thereâs no characterisation
that makes you like these people and care for them, nobody even re-acts normally
and the lines all feel wrong in these characterâs mouths, while worst of all
weâre told things, over and over, not shown them. You would have thought that
this was a first time writer who didnât understand the series, writing for
characters they didnât know, not a showrunner at the end of his second
year.
There are other more boring
stories in the Dr Who catalogue: âMonsters Of Peladonâ or âThe Mutantsâ for
instance, though considering this is a plot about aâtimeless childâ you donât
half find yourself staring at the clock. There are other equally confusing
stories: a lot of the Steven Moffat series closers do something similar that
only make senses after lots of repeated viewings, although this one doesnât make
a lot of sense even after you go back and re-atch it lots. There are others
that take great liberties with Dr Who folklore: âThe War Gamesâ and âThe Deadly
Assassinâ, though this plot really takes the biscuit. There are other episodes
every bit as misguided about what this series is meant to be: âThe Dominatorsâ
or âKerblam!â for example, where war and capitalism is good. No other story
messes up on all four scores as much as this two-parter does, though. I could
have put up with the âTimeless Childâ revelation and all its contradictions if it had led to a good story but it doesnât.
I could have put up with a bad story if it led to a new and clever way the
series was going to work in the future. It doesnât do that either. Itâs a story
arc thatâs not even that inventive or original (the 7th Dr era
hinted at this sort of thing, but the clue is in the word: hinted) but it doesnât
go anywhere or make for good drama and just got longterm fansâ backs up. What
was it all for then? I doubt any future showrunner will return to it somehow (despite
Russell T making a point of saying he wonât undo it) - this is one of those
moments in Who history fans just pretend never really happened, like the Doctor
being half human on his mother's side or having a grand-daughter as early as
his first generation (or not, as it turns out I guess) âI wish it wasnât true but it
isâ says The Master as he tells the Doctor. I know the feeling. A huge
disappointment as a story, a series arc
(the hints we had coming into this story made it seem a lot more interesting
than it turned out to be), as television drama and most especially as Dr Who,
this is the nadir of the series, a story that re-wrote the rules for no good
reason and didnât even do that properly. Okay, after watching that I know Iâm
broken, but itâs all over now: there is so so much better to come.
POSITIVES + Thereâs
one thing the Chibnall era gets right compared to the Russell T and Moffat
uyears: the music. You get so used to Murray Gold telling you how to feel, with
a choir pointing the way with every slight revelation, that composer Segun
Akiolaâs underplaying of everything is a massive relief. This is incidental
music that really is incidental, an extra not the main player. His scores are
almost all good, but this is one of his trickiest to get right, with so many
spaces to fill, and it does a good job of creating an atmosphere that otherwise
just isnât there.
NEGATIVES â That
whole plot in Ireland: what? Iâm all for scripts that leave us to join the gaps
and weâre clearly meant to think this is one of the Doctorâs lives before they
had their mind wiped and forgot it. But why there? Why not just stick her in a
glass ase or keep her in the Matrix for safe keeping? To timelords Earth is an
insignificant planet in the backwaters of nowhere. And itâs a place where the
Doctor could either get hurt or (as happens) do something alieny and weird that
draws attention to themselves. Why risk it? And what happened to them after âBrendonâ retired and had his mind
wiped? Did he just live the same role over and over again or did they put him
somewhere else? Weâre used in this show to having more questions than answers
but honestly, what was the point of all that then eh?
BEST QUOTE: Best Quote:
Graham - âIâve got an idea, bit of a mad one, very dangerous and it might not
work. Weâve got form with those sort of plans havenât we, Yaz?â
PREQUELS/SEQUELS:
In case you ever wondered how Yaz and Dan learned about the Timeless Child arc
itâs a short story in the 2022 Dr Who Annual named, fittingly enough, âThe
Timeless Childâ. Most notable for the Doctorâs joke that âthe seven dwarfs have
nothing on my history!â
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âRevolution Of The Daleksâ