Doctor Who 12x06 "Praxeus" full reaction
Added 2021-04-30 22:26:19 +0000 UTCComments
Didnt kill her though and we saw her alive and well not long after- these deaths were very final as well as brutal.
BobBob
2021-05-07 23:58:55 +0000 UTCBill was shot and we got to see the big hole in her chest, now that was rather horrific
michael moslin
2021-05-07 18:42:27 +0000 UTCPraxeus. Well this one sort of writes its own critique- a pile of rubbish, steaming heap of garbage. Ok it wasn't quite that bad, just not quite any good either. It of course suffers from being the second environmental story in this series in quick succession and the third or possibly even the fourth with such a theme in it since Chibnall took over, and when you add in all the episodes lecturing in other real world social ailments there is a certain weariness, a 'oh no here we go again' sinking feeling as you realise its going be yet another episode in which we are told what a horrible world we live in and how horribly we are messing it up. What it is not is fun, escapist, scifi/fantasy tv, I never thought Id long so much for an episode where they just go and have a fun caper with Agatha Christie and fight a Vicar who is really a giant wasp from outer space or something equally silly but enjoyable. In the end all Chibnall' social commentary episodes come down to is this thing is bad, this thing is good simplicity. There isn't the time to tell a more subtle story. For example a more interesting moral dilemma and grey area tale would have been if the story had been about the alien scientists, the plight of their people, the need to use host planets to find the cure, the slow but sure casting off their ethical and moral ties even as the Doctor tries to persuade them to stay true to their principles and themselves, Suki's final betrayal having personal meaning as a sign of the Doctors failure to do so. And still used the environmental message as the backbone of why Earth to do it on, you have a Who tale with nuanced views on the same subject. Where we aren't just told why they are doing it, but see what brought them to do it and to understand in some part why. This is another episode which suffers from too many characters that are instantly forgettable, and I don't just mean for the viewer I mean for the script too. Hell Ive mourned a dead goldfish for longer than that girl does her best friend, and longer than the goldfish could remember me for anyway if it wasn't already dead! There's the guy who dies on the beach to the crows, what's his story then? Who cared for him? Well nobody if the speed at which everyone forgets he existed and moves on is anything to go by. But the script does it to characters as well as the viewer forgetting them, blogger girl is present to the end but after the fist third she doesn't actually do anything except be with people and make the occasional remark. She is present just not actually needed. This actually works in the favour of the scientist twist, as by the point you meet her you're already attuned to not giving too much attachment to anyone as everyone is largely background. Where this episode is best is where its intimate between two characters. But it hardly gets time for that fitting everyone else in. So onto the meat and gravy of this Chibnall dish. We are introduced in high octane fashion to a crashing spaceship and astronaut, and to one of our main characters for this one.... a detective down on his luck, out of his job with a rough violent streak but a heart of gold and filled with an inner pain only love can bring and eaten up by self recrimination, failing in civvie street and turning to the bar and the bottle for reprieve. Or a cliché as otherwise known. And if he was really a cop, especially a British one, then unless he comes from a 1970's cop show like the Sweeney, or he was one of the Professionals he'd already know you don't rugby tackle teenage shoplifters to the ground with severe force. The switch from space crash to shop is nice in switching to something mundane and grounded, but then they immediately undercut that by making it stupid and unrealistic. And it immediately gets worse are we are introduced to the two female bloggers in a dump, who decide to camp in the middle of the dump. They show us them walking in through lovely scenery not twenty paces away! But no middle of the toxic hazardous dump for a good nights sleep. No one would ever do this, ever. And you cant get away with having one character point out they cant stay there, then cut to them there as to mask it in humour. Its not funny its still just stupid. That's two loads of stupid thrown at us right off the bat in the first few minutes. The chronology of this episode is a bit weird to say the least, and not because its timey wimney, just messy wessy. Cop bloke is in London while girls spend night camping in Peru, by time girl wakes in morning in tent and meets Ryan and rest cop is in Hong Kong. How? Its an 11 hour flight from London assuming he could have found one at such short notice. And if whatever he is suspended from the police for doesn't invalidate him travelling of course. The first evil raven we see close up, sitting upon the roof, looks terrible, like a stiff awkward animatronic at a very, very cheap funfair ghost ride. Yaz's 'two friends roaming' line is really callous and tactless in the circumstances. I suppose they were trying to show her as brave and daring, but she is really making a series of very reckless decisions here with little to no information to base her decisions on, and she's tactless to boot. She comes over rather than brave and daring as reckless and foolish. A bit like Clara towards her end, only you know without any of the story or character development for it. Whilst this episode throws us some minor clues about what's going on the main bulk of the discovery is not in fact a discovery at all, its us watching the Doctor explain it out loud to everyone in the room, including us. Its yet more exposition and plot dumping in dialogue. I mean take the alien scientist, couldn't we have had a brief scene of her after she transports back where we see she is wearing a shimmer and converts to her alien form to show us this information, was the Doctor just explaining it at us amongst a load of others things really the best means to convey it? And as this episode began on stupid so it ends on stupid, with our brilliant scientist for thinking that a cure she just helped make specifically for humans will work the same on all other species without need for further testing of any sort. Not only that she transmitted this 'cure' to all her people, who we have to hope are a bit brighter than she turned out to be as she gave it to herself without a single test. Whenever 13 says something like “oh wait a minute, I'm having a thought.” it actually mean 'I'm about to exposition at you everything we are about to do.' Yaz and Graham make an interesting comparison, Yaz gets far more to do than Graham, but she does nothing important. She goes back in to find the gizmo of importance, but though she gets information from it its for the viewer only, it doesn't actually factor back into the plot, its not how they get where they are going. She teleports to the plastic place beneath the sea and finds the sub, but its all fringe to the plot, joining up some earlier dots. For Yaz its busier but all very inconsequential. Graham on the other hand only has one big scene, with cop where they talk about relationships. And its meaningful, and it further defines Graham maturity and having lived a longer life and accumulated if not wisdom then at least experience. The little nod to Grace was lovely too and perfectly captured in the wordless response. A wonderful tiny demonstrating from the actor of how to do show don't tell. Yaz's stuff was longer but not of weight, or insight, or depth or any meaning for her, the plot or the other characters in the plot. Even when we all just watched the Doctor pilot the TARDIS to materialise around the cop and save him a millisecond from it blowing up, for some reason they thought it necessary to then have 13 say all that right after we just saw it happen. Why? If it weren't for the slightly heavy environment theme being put across so soon after the last one, and this is measures above Orphan, but that's like saying a tree is measures above an ant in height. An ill ant, with only one antennae and a wonky couple of legs and a bad habit of falling over and screaming “Benny!” this episode would be another run of the mill, slightly clunky with largely forgettable extras and a cliched romance story (apart from it being a gay marriage it was very by the numbers romance tale, and to those offended by the gay kiss or the entire premise, well I cant help you, but Id be surprised if there are many, especially in the very secular UK who care any more, least I hope there aren't). The plot is ok but clumsily delivered, its exposition strewn yet again, Graham still gets all the good character moments even when he's hardly in it- so run of the mill Chibnal era really. Oh and I thought the Praxeus deaths were well done but maybe its my increasing age, but they seemed a little too explicit and horrific for Who. I know there's plenty imagery from classic haunted my childhood for years, and Who should do that its part of the thrill for a kid watching, but these seemed a little coldly brutal in some fashion I cant quite put my finger on. Maybe its when older Who did body horror it always had a sense of tongue in the cheek alongside it, or self-knowing or self- mocking of tropes, or a touch of camp, this felt more like how you'd design a death for an actual horror movie, to be horrifying and to shock but nothing else. It seems at odds with this particular simple and child friendly Doctor. As the shows creator said about Who's child audience, “We want to scare them not terrify them!” And there is a difference.
BobBob
2021-05-06 19:54:26 +0000 UTCI agree, the environmental issues were incorporated much more seamlessly into the episode, which made for a better story. A pretty successful episode, I think!
Fourth Wall Reactions
2021-05-04 05:34:14 +0000 UTCI actually like this episode. It handles the environmental message a lot better than Orphan 55 did. I think it's a lot more successful with the pollution message here. It actually feels woven into the plot unlike Orphan 55 which just plastered the environmental problem at the end of the story as a stoic PSA message. This aired a month before the beginning of the pandemic so it's very eery in retrospect. The characters in this story are also better than the Orphan 55 characters and the plot feels more focused and coherent. It starts off well by following from the signal The Doctor received in the last episode and the companions being separated allowed for more breathing space. It's good that Yaz was allowed to be more independent here but unfortunately it didn't really lead to much happening on her end but it seems like an improvement from the last few episodes. Jake and Adam were really good characters. Their relationship was handled decently and kept me invested. Thankfully, they didn't kill them off which was a relief as they tend to do that with LGBT characters (*cough Series 11 and 6*) so its refreshing for them to get a happy ending here. The body horror with the Praxeus infection was also effective. However there are definitely some noticeable issues with this story. While I understand what they were trying to do with Gabriela, she hardly reacted to her friend dying. For someone who she's known for several years, it's weird how we didn't see her get emotional or properly affected. I understand that the Praxeus problem itself was more of the focus as they're travelling back and fourth in the Tardis but they should have dedicated a bit more time on her grieving process. I think combining this with her realisation of the Tardis should have properly left her scared for a while. Jamila was completely forgotten after she witnessed her die so horribly. Speaking of forgotten characters, poor Aramu was also forgotten without anyone caring for him or even acknowledging him. We didn't even know if he was aligned with Suki or if he was human. I feel like he was most likely human tbh. I'm also wondering how Adam managed to send a message to Jake considering the state he was in. It's also weird how the hospital staff and individuals who took Jamila to hospital were completely absent. I'm assuming they were also killed by Praxeus? I also found it weird how Gabriela and Jamila camp at a garbage dump. No rational person would do that. They could have just gone back unless I'm assuming they didn't have transport to return? Considering this episode had two writers, it might explain the few issues this story had but aside from that, I still liked it. The twist with Suki was fine. This episode has the unfortunate factor of following the Fugitive of The Judoon episode so it won't have the instant appeal on a first watch but aside from those issues, it's still a decent episode. I still like it. This episode had the companions more proactive and actually doing things hence why I think the separation worked. The global scale worked decently. This also ended on a more hopeful note which is another reason why I like it a lot more than Orphan 55. In a way, Jake saving the day allows him to finally see the world in a way his husband usually does. A reckless but selfless act of bravery in order to protect humanity. I just like the general feel of this episode with ordinary people being drawn into The Doctor's world.
JY
2021-05-02 20:18:12 +0000 UTC
