New New Dockeroo

The first season of Doctor Who (2024) was a mixture of pretty good and pretty bad episodes, which in many ways is correct for the series. For an introductory season of only eight episodes it seems like a waste to spend two of them on a two-part nothing burger of a season finale.

Things I enjoyed

My favourite episodes were the monosyllabic ‘Boom’ and ‘Rogue’. The first of these has a proper dark sf premise—warfare run by algorithms, with the arms dealers’ interests trumping those of not just the common soldiers but their bosses as well. I guess the Doctor (or his Tardis) is able to ‘translate’ an AI in to a form where it can take over a whole military network.

’Rogue’ has villains who are funny and sinister all at once, ruthlessly invading historical Earth, defeated using a gadget that had already been introduced by almost killing the Doctor. And Rogue is a great character, hopefully to be a recurring one. The snogging in this episode looked a lot more fun than the somewhat forced kiss in Doctor Who (2005).

Other Doctor Who episodes

‘Space Babies’ works as a (re)introduction of the premise of the show, it has a funny situation which is kind of justified by the sf background. The talking babies were pretty well done. I am not a fan of pun-based abiogenesis, however.

‘Dot and Bubble’ is one of RTD’s ‘What if everyone …’ stories, presumably inspired by his seeing some influencer-wannabe crossing the road while scrolling their phone. Beautifully realized by their effects people. I loved the colour scheme and the fashions and the depiction of the environment. The anti-racism message was delivered as clunkily as the somewhat forced kiss in Doctor Who (2005). Not a fan of spite-based abiogenesis.

Failed to watch ‘73 Yards’. Got as far as the pub-ful of Welsh people who, discovering a shivering and coatless town girl who has lost her ride, can’t find her travelling companion, and is being stalked by a weirdo, can find nothing better to do than tease her for being English. Then BBC iPlayer had a glitch or something and I wandered off to do something else. Have been told it’s the greatest episode ever.

Is this Doctor Who?

The new season opened with two simultaneously released episodes, I guess to give new viewers an idea there is a lot of genre variation in this programme. ‘Space Babies’ was a pretty good representation of New Who. ‘The Devil’s Chord’ was a bit odd. I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand this ‘Gods of Chaos have returned, reality is but a narrative of the fairy-tale logic of children’s collective id’ business is super dumb, and the idea that music physically manifests as a black rubber stave with 3D quavers on it is offensive to musicians. On the other hand the performances, the costumes (!!), and production generally were great, the pace was good, the Beatles and Cilla cameos were a lorra lorra fun. But the new gods stuff is so dumb. Also, no discussion about the fact Earth (the universe?) had no music for 40 years in this timeline.

The big reveal in the two-part finale ‘The Legend of Ruby Sunday’/’Empire of Death’ is Sutekh of all people, inviting a comparison with the serial Pyramids of Mars from 1975.

The Pyramids story has an Edwardian-era archaeologist taking (looting) artefacts from Egypt, some of which turn out to be disguised alien gadgets left over from when Osiran criminal and death enthusiast Sutekh was imprisoned on Earth. There are robot mummies, a fanatical Egyptian follower played by a white actor, and literal pyramids on Mars protecting the universe from Sutekh’s rampage, guarded, naturally enough, with elementary logic puzzles.

The story, told in 100 minutes over four episodes, has Sutekh seizing on a chance encounter to enact a plan to use those leftover Osiran bits and bobs to destroy the transmitter keeping him imprisoned. The Doctor has to discover the plan, come up with a plan to thwart it, put it in to action, and deal with reverses along the way.

The new story, told in 100 minutes over two episodes, has some dribble I could not follow which adds up to Sutekh declaiming ‘That Bad Wolf that followed you everywhere—it was me! Bwah ha ha! Now I kill everyone in the universe, and nothing other than completely reversing that can possibly prevent it!!’

Also, Sutekh looks like CGI Goofy with a chaos makeover.

What have we learned?

The season ends with an extremely brief meditation on how Ruby being an ordinary girl with ordinary parents is what makes her special uwu, which is interesting when I look back over this rant, because the episodes I found most engaging were ones where the Doctor is trying to save at most a roomful of fairly ordinary people. Whole universe turning to sand—who cares? It is narratively impossible for it not to be reversed, so where is the suspense? A handful of soldiers being euthanised one by one by a demented ambulance just to make a point about capitalism? Now that’s a story.