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...