Doctor Who 11x5 - REACTION HIGHLIGHTS!!

A good surface-level episode. Nothing overly offensive to the eyes or ears. It's a bit of a beige cardigan for me. You do have to pause to appreciate the comparison of styles. RTD's tenure could sometimes lean too hard on the relational dramas, and the mild dysfunctional family dynamics we all have. Then there's the possibility of a repetitive fixation on the potential love life of The Doctor. A bit tortured but fun Casanova from the stars. Whereas Moffat was arguably in danger of pushing the envelope a little too hard at times in constructing overly convoluted narratives, ladened with overly verbose and often silly and juvenile wordplay. The tortured soul is still present, through the different guises of an imaginary friend and a curmudgeonly teacher worn and weary that perhaps they've lived too long. Chibnal however is a way more straightforward expositional writer. He has a gift. The potential for a great idea. His biggest weakness, for me, is the execution of those ideas. He wants a larger travelling unit but then risks having to sideline them in turn for guest characters. Maybe your first poor decision, when you already have a shorter series. The unity of his ideas doesn't seem to find their voice way too often. He's up at the front of the class for show 'n' tell but he looks decidedly empty-handed. I think he's stripped back on a lot of distracting elements that would often be the more entertaining parts of a RTD or Moffat-era story. Particularly when their core ideas weren't necessarily working as well for me. I support that notion if it's part of making a clear and definitive identity for your era. But you also have to make your stories more unified and captivatingly entertaining, absent the frill and lace of characters that jump off the screen at you. "Oh yeah, Ryan is here!" 🤣🤣🤣 1 out of 5 so far. Personally, that's my definition of deprecation in quality. I appreciate we won't all see things the same.

Daryl