Doctor Who: The Whittaker Specials

Physician heal thyself.



So let's do this properly, Eve Of The Daleks the third and final New Year's special, how is it? I think it's a solid special, if I had to pick favorites I think Resolution is the best but this comes second. Set in a very budget friendly storage space the Doctor and crew have arrived in the midst of a time loop, and you think oh a Groundhog's Day style story with the Doctor constantly being assaulted by Daleks not a half bad premise, but I actually appreciate it's a slowly dwindling time loop so if someone dies it could be final. It's a fun little story with humor, plenty of exterminations, and easily the oddest Dalek story yet. I'll admit it took me forever to realize who Aisling Bea was because I've watched many a time The Big Fat Quiz show and she was a welcome treat, and Adjani Salmon I hear a lot of creep admonishing but I personally saw him as a shy well to do guy trying to get a relationship started so I took no major offence. It's a decent story and the whole Thirteen and Yasmin or Thasmin for shorthand thing, knowing that and watching allll the episodes beforehand I don't genuinely feel it was terribly tacked on. It can be seen as a more subtle under the surface romantic relationship rather than the petulant, please give me your dick, anvil drop that was series 2 Rose, and if anything it just further proves that no matter the gender Doctor Who is in for the vulva. Moving swiftly on! Now unfortunately we come to what I consider the absolute weakest episode of Jodie's tenure. I know, The Tsuranga Conundrum, Orphan 55, Praxeus, not very highly regarded episodes but Legend Of The Sea Devils is just so underwhelming and just....there. Like come on people, the Sea Devils are finally back and they look glorious, and you give this no stakes, plodding, nary a drop of interest story, I don't even think I can comprehensively recap said story. The Doctor, Yaz, and Dan meet famed pirate queen Madame Ching, who's unleashed the Sea Devils unwittingly who are really fucking with their shit, and there's sea serpents and ghost ships, and all this wild stuff, and....I...I got absolutely nothing. Very good effects, worst sword fight ever I said what I meant and meant what I said, bit more Thasmin scenes for you shippers out there, but ultimately useless and futile. Next! Ah The Power Of The Doctor, a whopping 90 minute goodbye for the Thirteenth Doctor, absolute fan wank overload and emphasis on the load (it's all over the walls boy!), fun, wild, loose, even a bit emotional for me, it seems so much closer to a 60th anniversary special. Again, not too sure I could fully recap the plot I mean so much happens and I feel if you try to break it down the whole story crumbles. All you need to know is Daleks, Cyberlords, and the Master are after the Doctor who in turn after losing Dan, which by the by what the hell I'm gonna miss him, reconnects with two past companions, Tegan and Ace as they try to thwart their plans. I haven't seen The Five Doctors but from more experienced fans it seems this is the modern series equivalent. Just a grand, fun, crazy celebration of Doctor Who and I really loved it. Seeing Jodie's regeneration was a big deal and not for the reason you might which dear God I have notes on that, so you know what? Screw it. We're gonna spoil it. Seeing previous Doctors was a monumental moment, the First, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, and well technically 14th Doctors was completely unexpected and I screamed just a tiny bit. Cause I've been delving deeper into Big Finish, so seeing David one more time as the First was a treat, Peter was great, seeing Colin made me scream like a fangirl, Sylvester made me shed a single tear when he talks to Ace because they are my favorite classic Doctor and favorite companion ever, and friggin' Paul being a rebel and looking dashing as ever made me grin like a fool. It may not be the most tightly written Doctor Who story but it sure as hell didn't disappoint or bore. So let's hash out this regeneration. Goddamn beautiful. Best looking regeneration ever, with the sunset, the colors, the rich flames, I was in awe! Jodie's goodbye, not super long or speechy, no flash or heavy emotion, just a simple embrace of the moment even though she wants to see what happens next. Lovely. And then David Tennant shows up.




Fucking.....really??! No, just no, no I am not happy. You've literally made Thirteen nothing. It's an admittance that, yeah the Chibnall era was just shit, and Jodie's tenure is pretty much gonna be swept under the rug. You will soon know tomorrow how I feel about it. I'm already seeing ****s on the internet dismissing this period of history for Doctor Who, when she was The Doctor. Whether you like it or not. It's part of the history, there is no goddamn retconning, there is no fucking revisionist history, it happened! I was already feeling uneasy when Russell was announced as the next showrunner, something unprecedented in Doctor Who, but I was like well we're getting a brand new Doctor so it's nothing, don't worry about it. So you are telling me, the Doctor can reclaim a previous life, a once before seen incarnation. Well where in the high holy hell is my 6th Doctor revisit??? Are you shitting me up the asshole! Even Ncuti Gatwa seemed friggin' pissed in that brief trailer, and I'm right there with you man. It just seems like a titanic middle finger to this era, because Doctor Who is shit now guys so we're bringing back the 2006 era babaaaaaay!! Fuck's sake. Sort it or abort it! No I'm not quitting Doctor Who! I'm too damn commited to it, do you know how many classic Doctor Who boxsets I have?? Like a MILLION! But I damn well expect these specials coming next year to be a farcry from the Tennant era. I'm not playing around. That was good to vent, I feel a bit calmer, not so irate, so let's wrap this up. The specials are a bit mixed, I never do individual episode ratings but if I did Eve gets a 6.5/10, Legend gets a 3/10, and Power gets a 8/10, so overall the specials get 3 stars, 7.5/10. That's it for Doctor Who! Unless I'm gonna do Classic Who, and if I do it won't be in order, the boxsets are kinda all over the place so it would be pure chaos jumping backwards and forwards in time. So if you want it we'll do it, at least one season per Doctor whenever a Second Doctor boxset gets released and my God that might take a minute, poor Pat's lost so many episodes. And on that bombshell, it is time to end. One final retrospect to go.

In Retrospect: Doctor Who Series 13

I know, one week early. We got other stuff coming up next week.




Very unprecedented this week of reviews, the time has finally passed where Jodie and Chibby step down from the show and an era has ended. It's quite a big deal, for me anyway, cause okay yes Peter was the Doctor when I started all this but I didn't start reviewing Doctor Who until Jodie had started her tenure so it feels appropriate we look back on Flux, review the Whittaker specials, and do a retrospect on her era. So season 13, how was it on rewatch? I wouldn't say it improved but it didn't drop in quality either. The pacing got more understandable and I wasn't running at warp speed to keep up so big plus there. If you've only watched Flux once all the way through, watch it again you'll have an easier time. It's just such a tremendous shame that this only got 6 episodes and is part of that big what if category of Doctor Who. What if Colin Baker continued on for a bit more, what if Doctor Who never got cancelled and the wilderness years were no more, what if Paul McGann got proper visual adventures, and what if 2020 wasn't quite literally the worst year any living person has endured? I think series 13 would have been really good if the shooting schedule didn't get slashed and burned so much, 10 to 13 episodes instead of a meager 6 could have made a universe of difference. And I should know because I'm still salty as fuck about Gotham's last season. Bastards!! But now that the dust has settled I do still like this series. The villains are still cool, the wide range of cast isn't as difficult to keep up with, Jodie I think does very well and is waaay more serious and even angry at points so I must commemd her. Special effects are still damn impressive, it's not cinema quality but considering they are on a BBC budget, very fine work indeed! Best episode for my money is Village Of The Angels, it just works so well with that horror atmosphere and doesn't try to juggle too much. Plus that ending is like for real for real, one of the best cliffhangers I have seen in modern or classic Doctor Who. Weakest episode, though frankly I don't hate any of them, I'd say Survivors Of The Flux though it does still obviously give a lot of interesting and unique ideas, it being a comparitively Doctor-lite episode makes it a bit of a sit. But welcome additions are found in every episode from new lore concerning the Angels, to the introduction of Bel (who is so damn pretty oh my lord) and Vinder plus the reintroduction of my love Kate. Don't even get me started, Captain Jack would be proud of the thoughts in my head so let's move on. This is a brief PSA, watch the Spoilerific Reviews of VoteSaxon07, he is goddamn amazing and he's done all of Jodie's episodes so internet, do your work. Now this is incredibly unfair but yes, series 13 is the weakest season of the modern era. Can you really blame it though due to the production? It's not a full series, it wants to tell a grand scale epic story but doesn't have the time to tell it, and there are some parts I wish they didn't rush (Division) but at the same time every showrunner wraps their stuff up before the next comes. Though Chibmunk sure gifted Russell and future writers a present bomb in the face with that watch. I don't hate the concept or implications, but it will be a fascinating story detail to keep an eye on. It's a decent additional 6 episodes of adventures in time and space, and not a half bad way to kill an afternoon, but I just hope people don't judge it super harshly in the future. Television is some hard shit to make let alone a programme over 50 years old. So join me next time, for a much needed expansion on the last New Year's special and the subsequent two specials capping off with a regeneration.

Doctor Who: Series 13

I know they called it Flux, it's series 13.

So last series for Chibbers and kinda of a throwback to classic Doctor Who, not so much in terms of story but format. Instead of a regular series of 13 odd episode, this series comprises of only 6 epsiodes each picking up immediately from the last. A true serialized return of Doctor Who, so how is it? Honestly I thought it was pretty good, I do feel it went too fast in certain episodes but it was still enjoyable and brought a lot to the show that I loved. So after the tremendous reveal of Series 12, the Doctor is thrown head first into the deep end with an unparalleled cataclysm known as the Flux, an oncoming storm that is destroying the universe planet by planet as enemies from her unknown life reemerge forcing our hero to try to figure out how to avert the disaster and defeat the villains. I honestly do not think the Doctor has ever been on the backfoot, backed into the corner so much before in all of Doctor Who, I mean she has quite a lot to contend with and is constantly going 1 million miles an hour to keep up with the insurmountable odds. Now I will say I haven't seen stories like The War Games or The Key To Time, very expansive and involved stories but it's cool to see this format back. And thusly we get a new good sized cast that spans the majority of this series, we still have Yaz and I'm all for seeing her continue on with the 14th Doctor. We get John Bishop as Dan who I really loved, a true down to earth bloke swept away in the madness, he was great and I hope to see more of him. We get a brief semi-companion Vinder played by Jacob Anderson, I don't think we'll see him beyond this series but his story is a strong one and it's nice to see another companion well versed in the spacey stuff. Now we get to the villains, hell yes. The second I saw this bizzare, purple skinned, crystal faced alien I was pretty much hooked, and the performances of both Sam Spruell and Rochenda Sandall no joke honestly make these the best original villains of the Whittaker era for me. I cannot tell you how much I love the design, the character, the stakes they bring. When the Doctor asks what they want for Swarm to only reply, "To reign in hell!" I was like well f*** I don't know how she's gonna beat these guys. Excellent work on that front. But let's talk episodes now, we start off pretty wild with all the seperate threads of the story and characters setting up each one, so it goes quite quick and it does make you question a lot but the intrigue works and I was very interested to see what happened next. We then get a mostly standalone epsiode with the Sontarans in beautiful classic Who garb, doing what they do best perverting the course of human history, fun and simple, bring on the next! The thrid episode is when we hit the mental time f***ery, it's a bit complicated but can be simplified as such: universe is going to hell, Swarm and Azure want to screw the universe even harder, companions escape into a constantly shifting avenue of memories, get some backstory on Vinder, one more seed is planted for the story, once more unto the breach my friends! The time of angels is upon us once more in a pretty good episode with time displacement, excellent touches to the already established mythos of the angels, has some long occuring outcomes for our companions, and one hell of a cliffhanger for the Doctor. The penultimate episode follows our companions travelling linearly through time adventuring and treasure hunting, parallel to an alien force inadvertantly forming UNIT which brings back Kate. My love, my dearest, I forgot how much I missed you so and you are more beautiful as each day passes. And she eventually meets up with the Tardis crew and deals with her alien problem while the Doctor is faced with her old life in more ways than one. Time for the endgame. Final episode, still neck breaking speed with some big events happening both personally to our cast and the universe as a whole, but it eventually wraps itself up and not super horribly at that. Though you bastards are tickling my good spot bringing up the Master, and I genuinely can't wait for series 14. But we got a special to talk about before the wrap up. A good concept with a Groundhogs Day premise yet still keeping a ticking clock, I absolutely cherished Aisling Bea she was brilliant and I would not mind if she got to be a permanent companion, I think I liked Revolution better than Eve but it's a decent special and I lost my fudge when we finally get the Sea Devils back. They should have showed up in Praxeus but screw it, I'm happy. I'm not entirely sure why this series was 6 episodes, maybe Chibmunk had other writing matters to attend to, maybe they just slashed it to have a bigger budget for a shorter story, so it has some pros and cons to it. Good villains, interesting story, but it goes too fast at times which I feel is the biggest detriment to the whole thing. If this story was expanded even by just 3 or 4 episodes the problem wouldn't be as prevalent. I still say series 12 is my favorite Jodie series but time will tell if her last few stories tip the balance. 3 stars, 7.5/10, and we'll dip our toes in the mystery pool next time.