Doctor Who - Madness Gone Politically Correct

ROSA - a.k.a. "The One About Racism, Not The One With Billie Piper"

The Characters:

• The Doctor, eccentric time traveler pretty much over her recent sex-change. Is possibly Banksy.

• Graham O'Brien, a man who married a black woman and drove a bus. Now sits in busses and doesn't give up his seat for black woman. Known to the folk of Alabama as Steve Jobs, wacky phone inventor.

• Yaz Khan, overconfident arrogant cop from future Yorkshire. Was a total slut in tenth grade.

• Ryan Sinclar, a man crippled with dyspraxia but has no problem pouring coffee. Suspiciously-specific denials of being a cannibal, if you ask me.

• Krasko, former Stormcage-inmate, serial killer, vortex-manipulator-owner and cosmic racist. Calls Olag Gan a lightweight when it comes to strangling cats and thinks Kaston Iago is underrated.

• Rosa Parks, that sanctimonious cow from Sherlock who, seeking new things to complain about, is now upset that she has to sit at the back of the bus like all the cool kids do. Gets an asteroid named after her but then again, James Bond, Sherlock Holmes and Sheldon Cooper have asteroids named after them. It's not that big an honor when you think about it.

• Mr. Parks, Rosa's husband who due to poor studio lighting looks rather like a white guy.

• Martin Luther King Jr, a nice bloke not to be confused with Martin Luther King Sr or Martin Luther.

• Jimmy Blake, racist bus driver with a vendetta, who has been cruelly overlooked by history even though he did the really hard bit of getting an unarmed woman arrested for sitting on a bus. She literally just sat there, both times, but does he get any credit for it? Nowhere damn near well enough!

• Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley, two friends who swap mobile phones on weekends.

• Emmitt Till, unfortunate tourist who was lynched before the episode starts. No doubt in ye olden days he would have been played by Terry Walsh in blackface.

The Plot:

Well, depending on who you ask, Doctor Who has either been fighting racism since day one or perpetuating it from the very beginning. Should we focus on the lead character overcoming prejudice and defining themselves as the absolute opposite of space Nazis? Or that David Maloney wasn't fussed about yellow face? Should we focus on the positive role models this year of transgender folk, racial minorities and the disabled? Or whine that an off-screen lesbian was murdered by space zealots and that doing a whole episode about black folk having it bad doesn't make 21st Century white folk feeling persecuted automatically embraced by all society?

Should we perhaps ignore all these entitled assholes on twitter who think anything less than their own worldview is scum and all white males should be executed in gas chambers (especially if you enjoy Talons of Weng-Chiang) and focus on what we actually saw in this episode that really should have been called Spirit of Rosa.

A temporal anomaly lures the TARDIS to 1950s Alabama the day before Rosa Parks pulls her bus seat stunt that is a keystone in historical developments of civil rights. However, some random loser from the 51st Century has come back in time to try and screw it over. Is he really trying to pervert human development for nefarious ends? Is he just a stupid racist? Was Chibnall just getting cold feet about bringing back the Monk?

Either way, our heroes have to suck it up and force Rosa to go to jail and live a life of horrible struggle that nonetheless changes the world and improves it a heck of a lot. The end result is probably the closest to a pure historical you can expect in the 21st Century series, with a full-blown exploration of how the Doctor can't treat the past of humanity the way she treats other planets. Sure, if this story was set on the planet Drangos where Drangs were being persecuted by the Thargs you can be sure that it would only take 45 minutes before the evil Tharg dictator was defeated and the Doctor dancing on his desk as the revolution is won.

But it's not. The plight of Drangos can be covered in a few minutes of exposition and we can all wistfully go "Oh, if only it was that easy to defeat the Nimon..." (The Thargs are working for the Nimon. Obs.) but this is the world our parents and grandparents lived in. The idea some gender-swapped Time Lady in a blue coat could have sorted out 1955 racism, the idea that it could be solved easily by someone smarter and braver than Rose Parks or Martin Luther King, does not sit well. We have/had to solve our own shit instead of some fictional character sorting out the nasty parts of our world for us.

So as people boggle across the globe wretch at the idea of the Biased Brainwashing Corporation telling people that the past wasn't perfect and the present's no walk in the park either, let's be glad it wasn't Mark Gatiss or Gareth Roberts writing this one. Because, yeah, they could probably do a fun comedy romp where the Doctor using the sonic to blow up a KKK meeting while aliens control state troopers with water canons. I'd probably have enjoyed it, but this stuff was real. People were hanged for saying the wrong words to the wrong tourists. There were stupid, incoherent and utterly dumb rules (yeah, you don't serve negroes in your restaurants because you don't want their money but you have to pay the ones that work in your kitchens). More than that, it's made clear that while the white folk had it easier back then, segregation didn't make them happy. The whites are terrified of the blacks. The jerk who slaps Ryan plays it like Ellen Ripley fighting an alien; he wants nothing to do with this but he will not allow a loved one to be endangered. Despite having a gun, the bus driver is completely cowed by a feeble old black lady out-staring him. Even the folk in the diner, who are seemingly happy to have the multiracial TARDIS crew in their midst, are shitting bricks when the diner staff get all angry. Racism helps no one and nothing.

And it will take more than psychic paper or sonic screwdrivers to stop it. The Doctor can defeat a wannabe time meddler with both hands behind her back and a blindfold on. Making mankind realize how utterly stupid and unproductive its prejudice is is a hell people lived through every day. You don't get a magic fix-it.

That said, Ryan still seems the main companion this year. Be nice if the others got something to do bar give Ryan someone to talk to and provide some useful exposition. But then, it's just typical for the black man to get all the hard stuff to do, isn't it?


Things I Learned From This Episode:

• Racism is bad. It's really bad. It's really, really, really bad. Not just in 1955, but even in 2015 where a white man had to prove he wasn't a racist before the woman giving him chemotherapy would consider date him.

• If you're black, you don't just have to deal with the white man grinding you down but time assassins too.

• Rosa Parks is many things. A civil rights hero, a living embodiment of freedom, but she wasn't the first black bus driver.

• American cop cars are like the shark from Jaws.

• Yaz is a Pakistani Muslim, but she doesn't like to go on about it.

• MLK was drowning in GILFs even before he was famous.

• No Alabaman will want to own land where a black man might juggle fish.

• Subtitlers think Jodie Whitaker is wearing a "cut".

• The TARDIS's crystal time rotor goes up and down like a proper time rotor.

• There is an asteroid named after Rosa Parks, so in the future space bus drivers will have to swerve and avoid and shout "Bloody Rosa Parks!" a lot. Oh, the onward march of progress.

• Taking about "separating whites and coloureds" when you're doing the laundry is now super awkward.

Stuff To Watch Out For:

• 2:30 - Well, if at first you don't succeed...

• 3:25 - And lo, a hundred fanfics were written. Mainly explaining that T-shirt.

• 4:26 - It's a white glove, too. What would Michael Jackson think?

• 7:06 - Bearded white guy recognizes the TARDIS, goes "oh no" and bangs on the door four times? Meh, it's probably nothing.

• 7:42 - So who was the first black woman bus driver, huh? Answer me that!

• 10:12 - ...why? Why is any of that there? Especially the toothpick!

• 11:13 - Nope, I don't know what it stands for. Is it a logo for briefcase sellers?

• 12:53 - it seems much later in the day on top of that tank than it does beside it.

• 19:34 - for the benefits of Americans, "Paki" is not short for "Pachyderm" because Indians are into elephants or something like that. I'm not joking, some yanks actually have not understood that.

• 22:52 - Oh Yaz, you still wonder why no other police officers want to work with you.

• 23:09 - it's like a more racist version of the opening credits to Nightingales!

• 26:18 - you know, she's even less danger than she appears to be. Impressive.

• 28:28 - this is probably karma for The Twin Dilemma. Probably.

• 31:36 - Rove proved this was historically and culturally accurate. So good for him.

• 34:52 - It's like Hustle, only the fate of all history depends on it and no one's getting screwed over!

• 36:31 - Yeah, the fistbump was a vain hope for all concerned.

• 38:10 - See, it's not her bra at all, you filthy little perverts!

•  40:14 - What the hell is Rosa sewing up? That wasn't part of the job!

• 42:44 - "Does this remind you of Archer, Barry? Yes it does, Other Barry. Yes it does."

• 44:49 - You know, technically this was already on her to do list. Makes all the stress a bit unnecessary when you think about it? She would have just done it tomorrow otherwise.

• 48:09 - Bill Clinton would definitely tap that.

• 48:54 - I demand the previous episodes be re-edited to feature Journey of the Sorcerer by the Eagles and Set Your Controls by Star One. God dammit.

Quotes:

Yasmin: "Should we know what artron energy is?"

Ryan: "She's the bus woman, right?"
Yasmin: "You do remember what she did?"
Ryan: "Yeah, first black woman to ever drive a bus."

Doctor: "Is anyone excited? Cos I'm really excited."
Graham: "You won't be if it's a bomb."
Doctor: "Don't kill the vibe, Graham."

Mason: "You being disrespectful with me, Mister Jobs?"
Graham: "Steve Jobs would never disrespect a Montgomery police officer, sir."

Krasko: "I was young. Nobody got hurt. Well, a few people got killed. A few hundred people. A thousand, tops. Two thousand."

Doctor: "Love to explain all that to you, but you know us Brits, very imperious, not prone on explaining ourselves to anyone. So, no time to chat, just get driving."

Blake: "If you don't stand, I'm going to have you arrested."
Rosa: "You may do that."


Standout Scene:
The Doctor and Foghorn Leghorn from Minuet in Hell, when she forces him to remove any pretense of being an impartial law enforcer to reveal his mindless hatred and prejudice without one raising her voice, verbally painting him into a corner when all he can do is stand there like a crap window dummy made out of pure bigotry.

I HEAR THE DOCTOR FIGHTING RACISM AND I APPROVE! YEAH FUCK IT  UP BABEZ!


Mr. LightHope from Superiority Complex Audio Drama's Rant:

One of the most bland Doctors to date. In fact, probably the most bland. I have yet to figure out who she is. Any humour or eccentricity seems forced. Whether that is bad writing or bad acting, I have yet to determine. And seriously, that magic wand stance has got to to. I cringe every time I see it. So far, she is my least favourite Doctor to date.

(Wow, Mr. "Pray The Gay Away Online" doesn't like a transgender Doctor. Still, the SCADs are real experts on bad writing and bad acting, along with forced humor and eccentricity. They know what they're talking about when they call a Doctor bland - they keep hiring David Segal, after all.)


Mr. Sparacus from Colchester's Rant:


3/10. So much wrong with this its hard to know where to start. At least it was educational. But it was simplistic, the alien was pointless and whose backstory was not explained. It is frankly absurd for him to believe that the USA or the universe only evolved out of racism because of Rosa Parks and the bus boycott. I do hope he returns in future episodes as he was very easy on the eye. And if ever an episode of Nuwho was suited to be a pure historical/educational episode it was this one. But no. Plus the song at the end was completely inappropriate and spoiled the episode. It was modern chart pap with no connection to the plot. They could have used 'Strange Fruit' by Billie Holiday, a song with a message!

Chibnall has picked the most fashionable political cause to advance - anti-racism, a cause already won ages ago but provides a political correct about polemic in a US-centric nature of the episode. Just because it was set in the USA during the dawn of the civil rights movement it totally ignored milestones in European anti-racism! A racist villain should be an extremely polite, courteous, well-spoken gentleman, like Jacob Rees-Mogg  - someone quintessentially English who would never tell someone to **** off while swigging from a can of stella and belching loudly.

I much prefer that film Mississippi Burning where some of the victims were white, and not doing that here just because it had nothing to do with Rosa Parks shows how unsophisticated and caricatured the script was. It should have focused on the feelings and thoughts of white people, but every single white American was utterly racist.

Apart from that *****-lover married to Parks, but he doesn't count, though, does it?

Doctor Who - The Agonizing Race

I've often ranted incoherently that every Doctor's second story is rooted in the Hartnell era. Don't believe me? The Second Doctor's second story? A pure historical/Robert Lewis Stevenson costume drama. The Third Doctor's second story with its different aliens, prejudice and mind control is right out of The Sensorites. And The Ark with its post-apocalyptic giant spaceship survival ship full of backstabbing humanoids, put upon alien slaves, gratuitous shrinking, nasty diseases needing curing and quandaries about the nature of human morality have all fed into The Ark in Space, Four to Doomsday, The End of the World, New Earth, The Beast Below and Into The Dalek. Paradise Towers is an 80s punk version of The Tribe of Gum and Attack of the Cybermen, with its bewildering quest plot, easily-killed rubber-clad bad guys, dodgy moral centre and explosive climax is clearly The Keys of Marinus. Even John Hurt's second full story, The Innocent, is deliberately rooted in the last episode of The Daleks' Masterplan.

So how does Jodie's newest escape go?

Of course, for the first time since 2008's Partners in Crime, the story opens not with a teaser and mini-cliffhanger but the actual title sequence itself. A not-unpleasant acid-trip through a kaleidoscope of blue purple ink (completely out of keeping with the red gold of trailers and publicity), it's enough to make even Superiority Complex Audio Dramas sit up and take notice.

Ewwww. Just awful. I've seen YouTubers do a much better job. This was just a random assortment of liquid graphics. No theme to it. Yeah, no face. I'm not deducting points for that. It was bad enough not to need any more help.

A YouTuber did make this.

Did he? Seriously?

...moving on.
Well, having accidentally teleported herself and her "fam" into deep space 500 solar systems from Earth, all looked bleak for our endearing Thirteenth (sic) Time Lord. Surely there's no way out short of an infinitely-improbable passing spaceship picking the gang up before that lungful of air runs up for them to survive?

...oh. Kaaaaaaaaaay.

I'm not sure if two spaceships arriving makes this more or less likely, especially as the female piloted ship takes the blokes while the male picks up the chicks. The female, Angstrom (played by that crazy big-nosed dog-lady from the second Cracker episode who has done lots of other things) lands her ship on the BBC-funded South African quarry world Desolation smoothly. Her rival Epzo (played by the nice loser cop from Cuffs) is, however, crap and his ship can't fly with the weight of both him and the Doctor and Yaz aboard. The Doctor deals with this Cold Equations situation the exact way no one else does - she jettisons the rest of the spaceship and at no point starts stalking her friends with a gun and singsong voice calling "I need your help."

Of course, this immediately shows the crucial flaws in Graham and Ryan's status as new travelers in time and space. Or, to put it another way, they've gone to The Prometheus School of Running Away From Things by remaining directly in front of a crashing spaceship. Though they have more reason to than Charlize Theron, since they were in a gully at the time and otherwise have far greater common sense and survival instinct than the rest of Liz Shaw's loser mates. In short order, the not-yet-TARDIS crew are back together and Epzo and Angstrom are sparking unresolved sexual tension as they head into a nearby tent on this dead world.

And, oh look, it's Art Malik.

(No one remember that catchphrase from Goodness Gracious Me? No?)

Art's been in Doctor Who before, of course, and his appearance as a blue skinhead hippie being threatened by a stoned Lucie Miller pretending to be an evil capitalist crocodile has clearly informed his appearance here as a dull-eyed, no-more-fucks-to-give rich bastard who can't even be arsed to be anything more than a trick of the light.

With a character as insubstantial as his hard-like hologrammatic form, Art is there to provide exposition like Michael York in an Austen Powers flick. Art won the twelve-galaxy rally chase across the cosmos and is now hosting it again. For some reason. And he wants to make this the last ever rally. For some reason. He could have axed the competition if he was so annoyed, but no, do it again. Having got rid of 3998 other more interesting competitors, Angstrom and Epzo have to cross the barren deserts of Desolation within one day to the finish line of The Ghost Monument of the title. Said monument is actually the TARDIS which has been glitching in and out of existence every one thousand days since forever or something.

The Doctor is overjoyed at this news and so decides that she and her fam should join this quest to the finish line which involves a rubbish solar-powered kayak across a river of liquid flesh-eating evil. Mind you, we have to take her word for that, it doesn't actually eat anything. As the gang get the boat working, we get a triumvirate of character based scenes - Graham and Ryan dwell on how Grace's death hasn't improved their relationship at all, Angstrom reveals she's in the race for the prize money to save her family from the galactic jihad currently under way and Epzo gets a long scene to answer the ultimate question:

The answer being that he had a hilariously-abusive childhood where his mother constantly betrayed him in "trust exercises" that crippled him repeatedly. You do wonder why his mother went to all this trouble to instill such utter nihilism and paranoia in her child instead of, I dunno, just killing him. "Mm, I'm pregnant. Do I abort or spend the next twenty years psychologically destroying him until he is a complete sociopath with a backlog of medical bills? Ooh, the agony of choice..."

With five out of six people agreeing Epzo's mother ranks a full eleven out of ten on the Sylvia Noble Scale of Maternity Obscenity, the gang arrive in the ruins of a hotel on the other side of the beach. However, it turns out this particular shooting location is just that - a firing range for burqa-wearing death-bots who we, as fandom, all assumed would be pureblood Sontarans in an epic continuity fest. Or Zygons. Or maybe Judoon. But no, they're just robots in hoodies with laser guns.

Fortunately, having been abandoned on this planet for ages and never actually passed their death machine qualifications, the robots are bad shots. Ryan thus decides to go Call of Duty on them with a spare blaster only to discover that, for the robots, this is just paintball and they aren't harmed by the bullets. When Ryan runs out of ammo and the robots keep firing, he runs off with a pitiful squealing that will make most right-minded folk burst out laughing like they're watching Lenny Henry pretending to be Michael Jackson.

The Doctor is furious at Ryan's impulsive, unhelpful shoot-first attitude and tears a metaphorical strip off him and making it clear she's not stepping off this soap box any time soon. Then she uses a handy EMP gizmo to wipe out all the robots and if you listen very hard and ignore all the pompous commentators going "Ooh, what a hypocrite! She used a gun just with a different name!" you might hear her explaining she's paused them long enough for the gang to escape the shooting range.

On the way, they pick up Epzo who's been shot and rub his face in how his "every man for himself" policy has totally screwed him over and if he wants to survive, he has to accept other people put their money where their mouth is in regards to being friendly and cooperative.

Ducking into the local sewer system, our heroes - remembering the warning not to travel at night now the three suns are setting, just like in Pitch Black - decide to take a subterranean shortcut to the Ghost Monument. The Doctor is the only one interested in why Desolation's thriving population mysteriously disappeared leaving a death world full of ruins when she literally finds the answer written on the set. This spooky apocalyptic log reveals that the same aliens jihading the galaxy stormed Desolation and turned it into a weapons R&D base using their prisoners to designs WMDs. The prisoners rebelled and purged Desolation and themselves to stop the aliens from getting their hands on the weapons. And they wrote on the floor because if they used the computers the aliens would have noticed on the internal server, but again you have to block out the screams of "What a cliche! Writing over-ornate suicide notes on the ground instead of a post-it note! Advanced aliens, my arse!"

Oh and the aliens are the Stenza.

No, not the ugly cuckoo space babies in the worst ever episode of NuWho, Night Terrors. They were the Tenza.

The STENZA! The guys from last week! The new big bad? Yeah. Them.

But Desolation's the one place the Stenza won't be, because it's currently ruled by the Remnants! These are night-dwelling sentient pieces of telepathic bandages that fly around their prey and mummify them, spending the day lying around in the background like tumbleweeds and ominously moving when your eyes aren't on them. Plus they're voiced by the creepy Mr. Dekker from Torchwood: Children of Men. Pausing only to make some ominous Bad-Wolf-style cryptic references to a "timeless child" the Doctor has forgotten, they waste no time in trying to consume our band of buggered bushrangers!

Now, as alien threats go, some floating rolls of bandage resembling a living frat boy TP attack are not the usual sort of threat anyone faces, so the Doctor is forced to come up with a novel trick to stop them. No nifty sonic screwdriver here, just an acetylene swamp, an exploding cigar and an emphatic snap of the fingers. All it's missing is Daffy Duck pulling his beak the right way round and declaring war.

Having survived the night, our heroes reach the Ghost Monument. Except it's not there. That pretty much blows the wind out of the Doctor's sails as all her cunning plans depended on the TARDIS being there. On a planet with a toxic atmosphere (who's lethal presence is as noticeable as Ryan's dyspraxia - ie, we'd never know if you didn't tell us), hordes of killer robots and nighttime vampire toilet paper, surviving for more than a couple of days is impossible. Apparently. Oh, and the space ships they used to get there are buggered, that's established, so ignore the choruses of fridge logic tools.

Epzo agrees to a three-legged race with Angstrom, so technically they both win the race and split it fifty-fifty. Art Malik is outraged at this and then changes his mind, for some reason. He's a complicated guy, I suppose. He agrees and then he, his tent and the wannabe-Holmesian-double-act vanish from Desolation leaving the Doctor and her pals to face certain doom from the aforementioned paragraph.

And then the TARDIS glitches into existence, just like in The Lodger, and a zap from the sonic screwdriver stabilizes it. But the police box prop is different and is now the outer porch to a revamped crystalline gears-and-wire-frame interior that looks like a cross between Superman's Fortress of Solitude and the reject bin of a dildo factory. But the central console dispenses Jodie Whitaker's favorite biscuits, so for once the "You've redecorated!" catchphrase is followed by "I like it!" instead of the relentless wisecracking negativity of that Scottish guy who ran things ever since the days Australian Prime Ministers became a transitory phenomenon.

So, eschewing any "bigger on the inside" punchlines, our TARDIS vanishes off into time and space to face... 1950s Californian racial intolerance with Rosie Parks and a guy with a Dalek gun. Got to admit, not the fun swashbuckling I was hoping for, but hell, this new regime's worked so far. I wonder if Graham will end up being the bus driver who sends her to the back? Or Ryan the man who convinces her to stand her ground? Or maybe Yaz will do something. She was in this episode too, but you'd be forgiven for forgetting that.

And lo, was this a Hartnell story? Of course it was! A four-strong regular team separated from the TARDIS and forced to trek across the wilderness, fighting dreamy hallucinations in the desert, being beset by mindless bandits, threatened by the elements and with a good guy and a bad guy on the team as they barter their lives with a smug royal personage lounging around on couches?

It's not The Ark this time, it's Marco Polo!


And finally, of course, the words of the Fishfaced One himself.


4/5. Not too bad but too much talking and not enough monsters. Won't engage the casual viewers who watched last week. Nice to see Venusian Aikido back. 

Once again, political correctness - defined as 'pushing an agenda at the audience, one that fits with a highly sensitive approach to life based on pseudo-moral condescension' - this week.
 The political correctness this week includes: 1) The Doctor moralising at a young guy for using guns. Clear anti-gun messaging when in most cases guns would have worked against the enemy from a character having previously fought in a Time War (hypocrisy)! The point is that sometimes you have to fight back with guns. Imagine if the allies in World War II had said, 'Hey lets not use guns against the Nazis, lets try to reason with them.....' The Doctor was moralising against gun use to a young guy trying to save their lives from killer robots. Robots! Unfeeling machines, not sentient beings! Like chavs, in most cases killing them would be the right move to do!

2) The Doctor moralising at a guy because his mother taught him to trust nobody when the mother was clearly right. True, she may have gone too far but the point is that human beings are naturally selfish and disloyal and will betray each other for personal gain, including within families. The Doctor implied that a woman was a bad mother for teaching her son not to be gullible and over-trusting.

And I am not 'still trolling'. Nor have I ever done so. It is perfectly legitimate to have a grown up discussion about issues raised in Doctor Who regarding gun use and parental advice about not trusting people.I have been a fan of the series since 1973 and have an extensive collection of Doctor Who DVDs and books. I have a copy of 'Doctor Who: The Unfolding Text' and have sat opposite the husband of Victoria Watling (??) in a meeting in Clacton.

Adam Rickitt could be cast as the season 12 companion should Bradley Walsh leave.

Yep, everything's back to normal. 

Doctor Who - One Broke Girl

Well... gosh.

As someone who grew up "spoiled" with Doctor Who, with the Radio Times 20th Anniversary issue and The Illustrated A to Z covering everything prior to Attack of the Cybermen, and the creation of the internet and some lucky DWM purchases the new series has generally come and gone with me having a fairly good idea what any given episode would contain. Indeed, part of my obscene fascination with The Space Museum was how little anyone anywhere had to say about it's cool-sound premise. In short, Chibnall's media blackout spoiler-blindness has been about as unnatural a state as I can imagine. I know more about the unmade Season 27 than I do about this series prior to broadcast and while many may rejoice in it, it's hard to feel "locked out of the loop".

Added to this is the capricious nature of my internet as it starts doubting its own existence all across the weekend, finally allowing me to get my grubby digits on a copy of Jodie's debut episode after the sodding thing has been shown at 5:55 on the ABC. For once I can agree at the idea it should be shown later in the evening, as a story set almost entirely at night in an industrial wasteland is hard to engage with when afternoon sunshine and the dusk chorus are pouring in through the windows.

And so, virtually clueless as to what to happen, I sat down and watched the show as-good-as-live.

Re: the above "well... gosh."

Regeneration stories in Doctor Who generally fit into a triple ven diagram with one part Spearhead from Space, one part The Eleventh Hour and one part The Twin Dilemma. A busy story where the new Doctor is one of many plots setting up a new version of the show, a story glorying in the sheer charisma of the leading man/woman, and a story deliberately trying to undermine audience confidence, not merely biting the hand that feeds it but spitting in your eye as well. Any given story wobbles between those three points - on paper, Robot is more like the first, but on screen is closer to the second, and the very idea of dropping a Tom-Baker-shaped hydrogen bomb into the UNIT setup is right into the third.

The Woman Who Fell To Earth, I reckon, aligns itself closer to the first. Unsurprisingly, with a completely new bunch in front of and behind the camera, the plot is only a vague excuse to draw the cast together and give an enemy for the Doctor to face down. It's efficient at what it does and, like Spearhead, builds on itself so the end of the episode feels as different to its start as it does the previous era. There's a better-than-decent amount of characterization of the new regulars, a distinctive and memorable monster, and a brutality to events that neither two regimes was quite able to deal with. People die horribly, pointlessly, and they stay dead yet at the same time this is the flame to forge our characters, to drive them to keep going and help others. There's none of the pointless nihilism of Capaldi's days, or the overwrought emotion of Tennant.

One might almost call it... maturity.

There's definitely much less comedy - black, cruel or otherwise - than ever before. The Doctor has a few moments of silliness as she undermines the deadly killer foe, often undercutting her own drama when her sonic short-circuits or she can't remember what pocket she kept the dues ex machina in, but there aren't really jokes as such. Nor, it must be said, is there any of the quotable every-second-line we've come to expect since 2010. The "dialogue triumphs" section of any future discontinuity guide are likely to be slim, but context gives phrases like "Ask me again" or "Don't be scared" far greater importance than you'd think. Meanwhile, every character has a troubled psyche or dark past, with cancer, dyspraxia and chronic anxiety to name but three disorders in the ep.

Despite my well-adumbrated and tedious dislike of the show for the last four years, I can embrace this new era as "proper" Doctor Who while at the same time noting this is not exactly what I wanted. It's no fun romp or joyful explosion of plot, and though the bad guy is undoubtedly defeated there's a surprisingly large body count of speaking characters and only one of them actually was a stupid asshole who deserved to die. The Doctor and her new friends are bonded as much by a shared loss as a shared adrenaline buzz, and it's no surprise that Yaz, Ryan and Graham only leave their beloved Sheffield by accident - the Doctor, likewise, had no desire to instantly recruit them as TARDIS fodder despite their camaraderie. After all these years of blisteringly intense passionate relationships, the Doctor had to turn into a sissy girls to treat her friends like actual people.

Ah yes, the gender change - the only part of TWWFTE to loiter in The Twin Dilemma zone. Despite the regeneration and the Doctor's perspective on it getting arguably the most discussion since aforementioned Anthony Stevens script, there are only two references to the fact Jodie Whittaker has a double X chromosone in the infamous leaked "Why are you calling me madam?" scene and then mentioning she hasn't worn women's clothes for a while. It certainly lends credence to Chibber's claims that the scripts for Doctor Thirteen were written for a male incarnation and then find-and-replaced. There's nothing in this story that, say, Kris Marshall couldn't have performed, and given the sheer incoherent and incomprehensible hatred of the #Not My Doctor crowd, it's probably wiser that the Doctor is introduced as an alien rather than a transsexual to the new audience.

Jodie Doc, meanwhile, is deliberately a rough sketch. In her own words, she's not quite finished regenerating and she is thus a character working on muscle memory without time or inclination for deep introspection. While Capaldi stretched his first scenes over the space of several weeks, with plenty of time to scowl and brood and ponder on morality, Jodie barely gets a chance to catch her breath. She is on the frontline, where Capaldi was in the shadows, she is standing up to save people, while the dour Scot let his predecessor's gang do all the dangerous stuff. Her first act is to leap into the fray and save people she doesn't know, Capaldi was to prove a time-wasting liability. When Jodie seemingly endangers her friends as part of a plot to trick the big bad, it's unclear whether it's a bluff or just absent-mindedness on her part but its clear she rates their safety very highly. Capaldi went out of his way for his first two episodes to make it clear not only did he dislike Clara, he was utterly uninterested in her survival. The biggest difference with her predecessor, though, is her confrontation with the big bad where she doesn't lose the moral high-ground whereas Deep Breath is structured so that whatever Capaldi did painted him in a bad light.

Perhaps most crucially, however, Jodie never has to "prove" herself as the Doctor to her companions. She presents herself as the logical leader, not bullying nor begging, but presenting her case. She's got her "fam" doing crazy stunts and putting their lives on the line long before she even remembers what she's called. Jodie has every opportunity needed to show natural authority, bravery and compassion. She builds gizmos, bluffs monsters, inspires ordinary folk and has an awful dress sense. To be blunt? If she weren't a chick, this would be the most play-it-safe Doctor introduction outside of the DWADs.

(Speaking of the DWADs what did they have to say?

Mediocre episode. I appreciate that not every story has be some gigantic, world threatening event. The problem was this episode was a little too slow. Maybe chop off about 15 minutes? Very mediocre Doctor. I couldn't even begin to tell you what her character is. Compare to Capaldi who had a great first episode. My wife hated the title sequence, even though there wasn't one and said something about Mork and Mindy.

Gah. I feel dirty now.)

And what of the companions? Well, Ryan Sinclair dominates the opening episode as the angry young man who clearly isn't getting the best out of life; his dyspraxia has robbed him of basic coordination and, in an industrial town like Sheffield, robbed him of most career options. His mum is dead, his father run off and his beloved grandma is off with a man Ryan doesn't think is worthy of her. He's not stupid, but he's not exactly clever either and in this episode at least he is more of a damsel in distress, being the one to do all the book-reading-research gubbins and be worried about by the other characters. He's clearly not yearning to explore the universe, but at the same time he's lost any reason to stay. Where this will go, who can tell?

Yaz, meanwhile, is a more traditional heroine and an obvious companion. She's bored, reckless, convinced with some foundation she's overqualified for her tedious probationary duty of sorting out parting fines (though it must be said her "fair's fair" attitude to the women parkers attacking each other with sledgehammers shows her judgment calls are slightly biased by own arrogance - she's too good for this, how can she not be right?). She's also a follower, and eagerly obeys every order the Doctor gives. Having her eyes opened to the wider universe and putting more power on her shoulders is precisely what she wants. This could, let's not pretend, end badly.

And finally Graham. The only sane man of the gang in a line stretching through Nardole, Rory, Mickey all the way back to Ian Chesterton, he's the least suited for TARDIS life. He's the one protesting at the illogic of running towards alien monsters, is the one needing things explained all the time - indeed, only lack of jokes prevent him from being the comic relief. He's not unlikable, though, just one of the many bystanders who are grateful for the Doctor saving the world and desperately hoping never to see her again. His slightly detached manner could be Bradley Walsh's first-night nerves or it could be very good acting; this is a man who's cancer unexpectedly went into remission and is still, after three years, uncertain if he should still be alive. Losing his wife Grace, who would no doubt have loved to travel in time and space, knocks down his last support structure and it's clear that even Grace's loss can't quite square things with his resentful step-grandson.

For all the guff that the costars are friends, not companions, the latter title seems appropriate now. Yaz aside, they are respectful allies to the Doctor to the end but they only socialize with her because they're a traumatized group only able to talk to each other - the foundation of many a cop show, Joss Whedon nakama and Torchwood, come to think of it. It's not just surprising that the new Doctor remembers their names, but its hard to imagine the other NuWho incarnations spending their time with these humans by choice. There's no love interest, no Susan substitute, just four strangers who had a fast ride in a broken machine.

The villain of the piece - forever known as Tim Shaw - is also an interesting novelty. Not a semi-benign malfunctioning machine, nor a psychologically-complicated alien. On paper, he's just Predator with the alien lust for heat turned to cold. As a rite of passage, he goes for a literal man-hunt on Earth that requires all sorts of honorable codes of conduct that are ignored and nasty things done to the skulls of his victims. His strange black armor and helmet resembling a compound insect eye is eerie enough, but his tooth-imbedded green face is certainly the sort of thing that will stick in people's minds like the green maggots and the angels that move when you blink. He's a monster, a coward, a bully and a jerk and there's a suggestion he might return in the future, certainly more of a suggestion than we'd ever see Heather the puddle again. His "gathering coils", resembling a cross between Cthulu Mythos and the scribble monster from Fear Her, is also visually-distinctive and will likewise help establish TWWFTE as more than "the first episode".

So, to summarize, this is not a bad episode. It's a fairly good episode. Not a great episode, but it didn't leave me wanting to slash my wrists like Deep Breath. It was a functional new beginning, meeting the audience on their own terms rather than trying to date-rape them into still watching, though the "look at our guest stars... there are captions so you can recognize them all... well, some of them... well, Lee Mack... maybe not Lee Mack" montage at the end shows the new regime aren't going to risk showing Weeping Angels on Karn to lure in new viewers. These are the people - people! - the Doctor and her pals are going to meet in their travels, and I could imagine, say, Season 16 doing the same thing, though it'd be more "Cyborg Pirate! Silver Witch! Green Dreadlock Dude!" rather than "Established Thespians of Colour And Age".

TWWFTE is the first step, and makes you want to see the next. It's aim might be lower than what we've been conditioned to over the last decade, but it hits the mark.

In unrelated news, Whovians has returned for a second series. So far thankfully clear of the revulsion of Bajo Whatisface, and with only one ghastly cringe moment (the opening comedy skit where Rove tries to build his own microphone like Jodie constructing her new sonic screwdriver - oh what laughs there weren't!) it alas doesn't amount to much more than a panel of semi-comedians raving how awesome the episode was. Rove again proves much funnier in improv than pre-planned humor, but there's nothing here to justify 25 minutes of air time especially in these rarified ABC times. The new spoiler-free, standalone aspect to the franchise means the team are as much in the dark about the show as anyone else, which thankfully saves up from something like last year's Vault Report skits or Justin's painful Here Is The New Who News or somesuch. Though this does allow something approaching actual discussion with a half-arsed but full-hearted discussion of the new Doctor's attitude to killing and capital punishment, something too complicated and adult for this show last year.


But I know what you're all thinking - what did the Emperor have to say?

As I don't have a TV licence, I tend to watch Doctor Who by finding a shop that sells TVs and has them on in the store. Unfortunately though these stores are shut on a Sunday so another idea so I had to purchase a drone, fix a camera to it and hover it over a neighbours window when they have Doctor Who on inside on a big plasma screen. Unfortunately the sound was hard to capture though

I wouldn’t say I hated it. I gave it 5/10. It was like a cross between the 1996 TV movie and the RTD era. Very different from Moffat, more easier to follow and the plot was fine. The music was much improved. Less swamping and overbearing than Murray Gold’s horrendous McMusic scores.

However what I’d have liked to see is a more traditional and quintessentially English feel to it. Doctor Who should be about reflecting high standards of behaviour and culture, I wanted to see the kind of English gentleman character portrayals of Jon Pertwee and Roger Delgado return. Whenever you saw Roger Delgado on screen you thought he was a man who could have an extensive personal library, who understood the art of fencing and cultivated tastes. Whereas one cannot say the same about Bradley "Everyman" Walsh.

The most authentic character in it was the lower-class, yobbish, fast-food gorging, drunken criminal type the urban areas of modern Britain are full of. I recall walking through Salisbury, a southern town, and saw a guy at a cash machine taking money out while simultaneously urinating up it and balancing a kebab on his arm. Do people in the north of England eat salad with their kebabs now? They didn’t when I was it Uni in Lancaster. My mate Sean was a northerner. He used to drench his kebabs in chilli (sic) sauce and sing a song about being on Ilkly moor where ducks play football.

The multi-ethnic casting felt forced and there were more non-white characters than whites in it, but apart from that, there was actually less pushing of political correctness in this episode than last year's stories.The Doctor even allowed her companions to break health and safety rules (which the establishment uses to covertly control people) by climbing up a crane, thankfully immune to this litigation culture we've imported from America. She didn't stand there saying "Please don't climb up that crane, I haven't filled in the risk assessment form yet".  I think that the viewers will really warm to her if she carries on being refreshingly down to earth. It would be good if she has a drinks cabinet in the TARDIS and likes a smoke, although I can't see the BBC allowing her to do either. I presume that pushing all this awareness about dyspraxia will mean future episodes have a range of such conditions to obsess and moan about. They'll be objecting about Jimmy Saville next.

The worst aspect was Jodie Witacker (sic) herself - she just isn't the Doctor. She just didn’t work for me, she doesn't convince me as the Doctor and her new costume is a joke, the worst since Colin Baker’s. Would have been better had the guy from 'My Family' been cast. When she said "would've" it was an absolutely infuriating example of falling standards and sends out the message to children that sloppy grammar and chavspeak are acceptable!  Witacker should play the Doctor's daughter, and she reminded me of that actress from Corrie. Not Adam Rickitt sadly. And does anyone else find it odd that the Doctor, who spent 13 incarnations as a Cis heterosexual male, was neither shocked nor traumatized nor affected by losing her 'male attributes' downstairs organs? Most males, whether hetero or gay, would notice the absence of their downstairs equipment and feel utterly bereft. Imagine going to bed tonight and waking up tomorrow morning with no you know what and a something else there instead!

The best thing about is was the alien and Bradley Walsh wasn't as annoying as I'd imagined he'd be. I predict the ratings will 8 million or so. The plebs will love it as it’s inoffensive type stuff and much easier to follow than many of the Moffat episodes. Lots of kids will watch it on Iplayer. However none of this is a reflection on quality.

Well, he was right about the 8 million bit at least...