Doctor Who travels back into the past once again, this time to 17th Century Lancashire, where the Doctor and her companions find themselves in the middle of an old-fashioned witch hunt. It’s an episode with a few too many moving parts, but which manages to be a lot of fun, especially by the standards of historical episodes, which I tend to not enjoy as much.
Month: November 2018
Kerblam! is a Fun Sci-Fi Romp, But it Gets a Bit Confused At The End
Series eleven of Doctor Who continues the trend of being substantially better when Chris Chibnall’s not getting a writing credit. Kerblam! is not a true classic, but it is an awful lot of fun, by turns funny and frightening, with a great spooky robot design and an actual mystery to solve. Ultimately, what holds the episode back from true greatness is an excess ambition without direction; it has pretensions at social commentary, but lacks a coherent political stance, making it all feel a bit confused and flimsy. Which is a shame, because apart from that, this really is a fun little show.
It Finally Happened
I’ve been waiting expectantly for this day to come. Finally, the eleventh series of Doctor Who has a properly good episode. Unlike much of this series, Demons of the Punjab is not merely adequate or mediocre, and while it is not as sweepingly ambitious as Rosa, it also dodges many of the problems that plague that episode. At last, Jodie Whittaker stars as the Doctor in an episode that I can feel good about recommending.
And all it took was Chris Chibnall not getting a writing credit for the first time this series. Bless.
This episode of Doctor Who is a high mark for this season…but only because of weak competition.
In The Tsuranga Conundrum, Chibnall-era Who has finally given me an episode that left me feeling satisfied at the end. That’s not to suggest that this is a particularly good or memorable episode; in another season, this would be a middle-of-the-road piece, neither a favorite nor hated. But I wasn’t bored or put off by this episode, and for this season, that makes it stand out.