Doctor Who Regeneration 03: Reversing the Polarity

[Neon Ignition]

Village of the Angels
Once again we veer hard in the quality stakes as this one was massively better than the previous weeks episode and probably one of the better ones of Whittakers entire era. At this point we have to pretty much resign ourselves to Yaz simply being one of the most pointless companions the Doctor has ever had, there's just no time left at all to salvage her whilst Dan remains in tow for largely no real reason other than to pad the cast out. This ep though separated them out from the Doctor and this finally, just before we get to the end of her era, finally felt like she landed the role. The pacing was well done, it was tense at the right moments and none of it felt undercooked. Any cliffhanger carries the issue of knowing they'll be fine but in terms of this ep is was a good one. The next episode looks like it continues on from this one to an extent so in terms of potential issues the main one to watch for seems to be the Angels and Division aspect which doesn't remotely work with the characters prior appearances in the show at all.

Series 01 - 4 Strong Episodes (Total 4 for Eccleston)
Series 02 - 2 Strong Episodes
Series 03 - 3 Strong Episodes
Series 04 - 8 Strong Episodes (Total 15 for Tennant)
Series 05 - 3 Strong Episodes
Series 06 - 5 Strong Episodes
Series 07 - 4 Strong Episodes (Total 12 for Smith)
Series 08 - 2 Strong Episodes
Series 09 - 3 Strong Episodes
Series 10 - 3 Strong Episodes (Total 8 for Capaldi)
Series 11 - 2 Strong Episodes

Series 12 - 1 Strong Episode
Series 13 - 1 Strong Episode So Far

[Neon Ignition]

Survivors of the Flux
Seriously, this series is all over the place. After last week we come crashing down again with another scatty episode that attempts to begin bringing things to a resolution. The Doctor loses her edge again, Yaz and Dan seem to now be on a sub plot that is all about them uncovering the day the world ends but with zero logic as to how, the main villains are still completely without real presence, the Bel love story arc is quite literally going nowhere, one character as drifted out of the plot, another appears but looks set to literally go from a bit in the first ep to a bit in the last one, we discover a bad guy was involved in UNIT's origins but I stil couldn't tell you what relevance he has to anything that's happening and finally a big push on trying to hard lock the timeless child arc into the canon. There's a very strong pattern now where the eps that Chibnall wrote alone are much weaker than those with the involvement of others and this was the same. The only real notable thing was the poor Child arc stuff which still just doesn't work or add anything of worth but seems like Whittaker is doomed to spend the rest of her run playing it out instead of getting to make a lasting impact in her farewell. There's a mountain of stuff to cover in one episode now but given how weak the resolution of the Weeping Doctor was in this episode I'll assume we're not going to get anything amazing.

[Neon Ignition]

The Vanquishers
Well, I wanted to know how the finale would bring all of those loose story strands to a cohesive conclusion and now we know. It doesn't. At all.
I feel I need to break it down as there's just so much going and so much wrong with it:

The Ood - Helps the Doctor and is for some reason allowed to sabotage the main villains plans under her instruction despite them being in the same room the whole time, they just don't do anything to stop it. It's reward is presumably the Doctor leaving it to be yanked across the multiverse as she pays it little thought once it's served its purpose

Three Doctors - She gets split into three versions that are conveniently plonked at the exact times and places she needs to be in

The Tardis - "How did that get there?" is all the explanation we're given for how the missing ship suddenly appears exactly where is convenient for the plot (tunnels hidden deep beneath Liverpool)

Bel and Vinder - Meeting random survivors is fine, it turns out that these random survivors are exactly that. Almost entirely plot redundant but just so happen to have found each other across the universe to... well, nothing.

The Grand Serpent - Created UNIT don't you know! He must be critical to the plot and its ending then, particularly as he seems determined to hunt down Kate Stewart. Well... no, he oversee's getting UNIT shutdown in the previous episode (somewhat negating bothering to help set it up and run it in the first place) and then faces Kate because... no reason, so just gets left on a rock to be forgotten about having had little to nothing to do with anything going on.

Kate Stewart - Must be critical due to the Grand Serpent hunting her down! Err... no, she just kind of stands around a bit.

Di - Somehow survives in The Passenger when every human put in there never has, her only explanation is 'I'm insignificant' but we brush past that because this irrelevant character for 6 episodes has worked everything out to save the day. She adapts like a genius and not only has worked out the environment she's in, it's rules and how to escape but also how to stop the flux. All that's out the window at the end though when she goes cold and weird on it all with Dan for no discernable reason

Yaz and Dan - They were finding out the date of the end of the world yeah? Here they kind of go 'Oh, the Doctors back', but obviously they critical info gets relayed back to the Doctor... or not, turns out it was nothing and doesn't even get a reference here. Yaz and Dan are here purely because.

Jericho - Can't be saved by the Doctor, she can travel near the Flux, across dimensions, inside another being but a room in a Sontaron ship proves too difficult

Karvanista - Here we're back to the now standard thing of trying to shoehorn Timeless Child references everywhere we can to try and make it as hard to unpick as possible. So, having randomly come to Earth and saved Dan as part of his races duty we now discover that Karvanista not only used to know the Doctor but also was a prior companion. The odds! He can't tell her anything though and we're never to question the logistics of it all either.

Swarm and Azure - The season baddies, so who were they? Dunno. We never get an answer, they just want to destroy the universe and then trap its final moments of death in a timeloop for everyone inside to experience again and again. Well, they do until the end when they arrive on the planet Time that we discover is now a person and they were working for it which doesn't quite sit with what's gone before. They're dispensed with and Time just kind of shrugs the failed plan off.

Genocide - The Doctor is fully behind it this week, very keenly wiping out three species no less

Claire - We find out why this psychic was in the plot at last... McGuffin! Yes, it just so turns out that completely out of nowhere the Sontarans are using a psychic field powered by humans to work out where the Flux will finish destroying the universe and isn't it convenient to have a full fledge psychic on hand. It only requires them to be tortured, something else the Doctor seems fine with.

Earth - So, the Flux was on its final wave this episode. The one to wipe out the Earth and final races, ending the universe forever but it's stopped before Earth falls. It must be a massive plot point, game changing that 99% of the universe has been destroyed leaving Earth as the last planet of life in existence... no? We're not going to mention it? Quite likely we're just going to ignore it completely and pretend it hasn't happened in a completely unresolved way as several characters merrily fly off for adventures in the now void of space? But everythi--- Don't mention it. But the Flux wiped out - I SAID DON'T MENTION IT!

Memories - She finally gets her hands on the fob watch with the memories of her past selves in it. And it's opened! Finally all this time this series and last focused on pushing this terrible narrative will get a pay off in this event series. Nope. Turns out that the fob watches magically don't work the same way anymore and rather than restore her memories she see's a wonky house and that's it. Afterward she hides the watch and we just brush it all under the carpet as a pointless pursuit for another series.

Cybermen and the Daleks - The biggest moment here is when they go all out budget wise on a CG sequence where the Daleks and Cybermen are wiped out from existence as a result of the Sontarans uncharacteristic plan. It's a massive thing though, both races wiped out of the canon! Wait, what's that? The trailer for the new years special and is that... yep, yep... Daleks...

Genuinely, it was embarrassing as far as writing is concerned. There really no longer is any real plotting at work anymore, it's just a constant series of double downs on Timeless Child elements that are becoming increasingly illogical and badly written because they are just bad, don't fit and seem to be in there out of sheer stubbornness. This finale was an illogical mess.

Final note goes to the lazy set up for the specials. So, when Tennant was leaving everyone knew it a very long time in advance, Series 4 hasn't begun yet and it was a two year journey. As a result that audience knowledge was factored into the writing, the entire Series 4 and Specials arc is teasing his exit and using it to explore the character and his reflection on regeneration and death. We know about Whittaker's exit too so what do we get? A lazy retread. She's warned that she will die soon, with no regeneration when she meets her killers master (Geez, I wonder who the master is...). She's naturally very unkeen and 'doesn't want to go' in effect and so the countdown to her demise is set.

There are 3 issues with this:

1 - Tennants arc is recent enough that this immediately loses impact due to how blatantly similar it is
2 - The threat already falls hollow as we know the next regen announcement is inbound
3 - Tennants worked because we knew the Doctor would continue, the arc's impact rested on Tennants exit himself. Whittaker is not playing the role with the same level of affection. This era ending isn't a threat, it's a promise so it's a poor choice of arc to replicate.

It's so weird because you'd think Chibnall of all people would be trying to do right by Whittaker but by god is he saddling her with some c**p. If Flux has shown anything it's two things, it finally gave some scenes that let Whittaker expand on her delivery and other writers salvage his scripts.

It's had some moments, like the genuinely solid Angels ep, but it's shocking how badly this fell apart.

Series 01 - 4 Strong Episodes (Total 4 for Eccleston)
Series 02 - 2 Strong Episodes
Series 03 - 3 Strong Episodes
Series 04 - 8 Strong Episodes (Total 15 for Tennant)
Series 05 - 3 Strong Episodes
Series 06 - 5 Strong Episodes
Series 07 - 4 Strong Episodes (Total 12 for Smith)
Series 08 - 2 Strong Episodes
Series 09 - 3 Strong Episodes
Series 10 - 3 Strong Episodes (Total 8 for Capaldi)
Series 11 - 2 Strong Episodes

Series 12 - 1 Strong Episode
Series 13 - 1 Strong Episode So Far

[MartyG]

Things were definitely simpler when Tom Baker was trying to stop Davros evolving the Daleks.

[Neon Ignition]

The worst part is that this is a summary of bits from a few episodes, it doesn't even account for the raft of threads and continuity issues Series 12 still has left unresolved too and it'd be nothing short of a miracle to expect and Easter and Autumn special to cover it all. I don't expect RTD to retcon it all and initially I expect he'll just not reference it at all initially but I'm curious as to how he'll pick up the pieces in time because there's simply much canon devastation at a core level to not address this at some point soon.

[MartyG]

At this point in the Doctor Who saga you can pretty much forget canon, unless you do a Disney and wipe out a huge chunk of fiction ala Star Wars.

That might not be a bad idea, go back to grass roots and start again - forget these complex interweaving massive story arcs that have plot holes everywhere and concentrate on what always made the reboot Doctor Who good - fighting the monster of the week.

[Neon Ignition]

They really should do, considering this is supposed to be primetime BBC1 content I have zero clue as to what audience they're pitching at. Casuals and kids will find nothing in these eps and it's clearly causing the fanbase to tear their hair out too. It really just needs a period to settle down and then a proper direction be applied to it. The difference in quality of the 00's series to now is vast.

[Neon Ignition]

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/dec/22/russell-t-davies-i-genuinely-thought-who-wants-to-watch-a-show-about-aids

Russell T Davies confirms his first episode of his return to the show, for the sixtieth anniversary, will air November 2023

[Neon Ignition]

Eve of the Daleks
To be honest, that was pretty decent. Xmas and New Years episodes are always more throwaway and this was no different, Chibnall clearly doesn't know what to do with the NY timing either which is presumably why we always get Dalek episodes. It was very brisk though and Bea was good in it, much stronger than Bishop which only goes to highlight the oddity of his casting and that he's still in it. Despite it being a continuation of Flux the connection is only light but Whittaker was again much stronger in the role than past seasons. In terms of lasting things moving forward, it'll be Yaz's crush which will be the main thing people take away but at this point it feels more like a bone being thrown at a defunct character. It's been left so late and with so little lead in that even here it's a brief mention two episodes before Jodie and Mandip exit their roles so it's clearly not going anywhere. The next special clip was very brief and looks light again and goofy. This was fun though, nothing amazing but a solid hour to spend on new years.

Series 01 - 4 Strong Episodes (Total 4 for Eccleston)
Series 02 - 2 Strong Episodes
Series 03 - 3 Strong Episodes
Series 04 - 8 Strong Episodes (Total 15 for Tennant)
Series 05 - 3 Strong Episodes
Series 06 - 5 Strong Episodes
Series 07 - 4 Strong Episodes (Total 12 for Smith)
Series 08 - 2 Strong Episodes
Series 09 - 3 Strong Episodes
Series 10 - 3 Strong Episodes (Total 8 for Capaldi)
Series 11 - 2 Strong Episodes
Series 12 - 1 Strong Episode
Series 13 - 1 Strong Episode So Far

[Neon Ignition]

https://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/news/celebs-tv/doctor-who-david-tennant-cast-6531823

I'd be wary but apparently the leaker has form and has said that the next Doctor will be David Tennant. Not as the Tenth Doctor but instead as the Fifteenth and will do a limited run before regenerating into the Sixteenth

[Super Monkey Balls]

Did wonder if they'd try that. Seems like the only thing that would save the show right now.

[Atticus]

A return from Tennant (along with Davies) would do the trick alright.

[Neon Ignition]

https://www.darkhorizons.com/davies-talks-return-to-new-doctor-who/

Russell T Davies says that his return will very much herald a rebirth of the show and that's one of the key reasons he was drew back to it, he fully intends for Eccleston-Whittaker to be a separate era and for the show itself to effectively regenerate as it did when Eccleston first brought the character back.

[Atticus]

That’s something I’m genuinely excited about. Bold move. I like it.

[Neon Ignition]

https://www.express.co.uk/showbiz/tv-radio/1569457/Doctor-Who-Matt-Strevens-future-Jodie-Whittaker-exit

The shows current and soon outgoing producer reveals he worried that the BBC would axe the show following Whittakers exit

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/doctor-who-star-stewart-bevan-has-died-age-73/ar-AAU8raU?ocid=BingNewsSearch

And Stewart Bevan, a companion alongside the Third Doctor, has died aged 93