New Year's Special 2021: Revolution of The Daleks( will contain spoilers)

[nixie]

Overall enjoyable, could do without all the emotional stuff and I'm beginning to hate the word fam.
I also found Captain Jack surplus to requirement to over the top, I get they needed him to get the doctor out of prison but he is annoying.
I did like the whole cloning thing, although the Daleks were defeated to easily. We didn't see enough of them, to much time spent on the doctor's and companions relationship than the actual plot.
Hopefully with only one companion the next series will flow better.

 

[Dave]

I did find Jodie Whittaker's Doctor to be a little manic, and in this episode those manic pieces set against the very slow parts seemed most odd.

And then, as you say, the Daleks were all defeated in the space of a couple of minutes!

It was a classic Doctor Who story though - evil capitalist industrialist clones something he has no real concept of but the Doctor saves Earth once again.

Is John Bishop the new Doctor, or a new companion? I don't really follow the news, and just checking online it wasn't clear either. I think he is just a new companion, but Jodie Whittaker is leaving sometime soon.

 

[MemoryTale]

I would guess from how the scene was set up, John Bishop will be a new companion. I haven't really seen him in much acting-wise, so I'll be going into his stuff with open mind.

I felt this episode was pretty decent, even if it did feature the return of Not Trump. There was a lot of navel gazing over what it means to be a companion, but as two of them were leaving I think it was warranted. I like the Dalek's new gimmick of controlling people, it feels suitably creepy. Yeah the Daleks were beaten easily, but that's often the case for New-Who anyway ever since the entire Auton menace was defeated by drop-kicking a test tube into a pit.

 

[Vince W]

A flabby and boring episode. A basic anti-capitalism message with Noth as faux-Trump. The Daleks were never any real threat, even the special Daleks acted stupidly. John Barrowman was entertaining at least and Noth was a suitably camp villain, unfortunately, neither was given enough room to manoeuver for their characters to develop beyond their appointed niches.

I had hoped by now Whittaker would have settled down a bit, but she's still too manic and Chibnall seems to think if she talks fast it will appear as if the Doctor is being brilliant. It's not working.

 

[Matteo]

I hate this "expression", but...

Meh.

As said above, too much introspection, the Doctor was too manic, the message too obvious (as always by Chibnall), Daleks defeated too easily [we watched it after I'd recorded it; I hadn't paid attention to the length of the episode and toward what turned out to be the end thought that it must be extra long episode - but no, Daleks defeated in just a few minutes (episode time)].

The reaction by the companions to the Doctor being ten months late seemed rather selfish considering from her perspective she'd been gone much longer (decades?).

The explanation of how the Dalek was able to set up a cloning facility was too much of stretch - in my head I heard "ahh" from TMWRNJ.

No real explanation of how the Doctor ended up in prison - or could not prevent herself from getting there, or escaping (unless I missed something - or forgot from the last episode). Same goes for that second Tardis (and how were the Daleks able to enter it? thought that was not possible?).

Jack Harkness can be very good - but not in this episode.

I don't follow any news either - too many spoilers - but assume John Bishop will be a companion. Hopefully he will be playing it straight (with an occasional quip) rather than being the comic relief.

As a side note - when was this filmed? Pre-covid presumably?

 

[Bagpuss]

As a side note - when was this filmed? Pre-covid presumably?

They filmed it in October 2019.

 

[AlexH]

I agree with the "meh"! I don't think the Doctor is too manic though - I just think the quality of the writing isn't as good as it was. I'll watch the next series just because it'll have changed so much with two characters out and one in. Perhaps the time since the previous series will have helped the writing process.

 

[Khuratokh]

Chibnell often does this. For example: Season 12-7 "Can you hear me" where we're introduced to a new set of potentially interesting villains. They are built up as this massive threat, only to be defeated by the Doctor in 2 minutes flat.

After multiple Dalek invasions, how are there any humans in existence left that don't know what a Dalek is?

 

[Vince W]

Things are changing again, it seems.
Doctor Who star Jodie Whittaker quits after three years as Time Lord

 

[Droflet]

She's been threatening to quit for years. She's a good doc so I hope they pay her more.

 

[Dave]

After multiple Dalek invasions, how are there any humans in existence left that don't know what a Dalek is?

I used to also think about this a lot, and why I never noticed the The Eugenics Wars in the 1990's from Star Trek, or why the existence of the Stargate hadn't been disclosed by Wikileaks, but I think I'm okay now.

 

[Matteo]

I have a vague memory (a Tennant episode?) where it was explained that Daleks have been wiped from human's memory.

But that memory could be faulty.

 

[Khuratokh]

I used to also think about this a lot, and why I never noticed the The Eugenics Wars in the 1990's from Star Trek, or why the existence of the Stargate hadn't been disclosed by Wikileaks, but I think I'm okay now.

I get your point, but these invasions took place within it's own universe.

 

[MemoryTale]

Didn't Stargate deliberately leak themselves in a terrible TV series so no-one would believe it was real?

 

[Glaysher]

Didn't Stargate deliberately leak themselves in a terrible TV series so no-one would believe it was real?

It wasn't a leak. It was written by an alien who knew about SG1 and was using memory supressing drugs so didn't consciously know the link. The air force allowed it to run though for the reason you gave.

 

[REBerg]

I, for one, was delighted to watch a new episode.
My chief complaints are the shortness of each season and the length of time between them. Oh, yeah. I also think that two companions are one too many.
Doctor Who is Doctor Who.

 

[Glaysher]

I, for one, was delighted to watch a new episode.
My chief complaints are the shortness of each season and the length of time between them. Oh, yeah. I also think that two companions are one too many.
Doctor Who is Doctor Who.

?
Doctor Who started with three companions.

 

[REBerg]

?
Doctor Who started with three companions.

Well, then. Three companions are two too many.

 

[MemoryTale]

Three companions worked back then because stories were much longer. A four part serial, roughly equivalent to one of today's two parters, was considered short. There was enough time for the TARDIS crew to fracture into groups of two or less, and each character had their own little story going on throughout the serial.

But yeah, I agree for the shorter stories, three is too many.

 

[Dave]

There are many, many TV shows that work very well with large ensemble casts, so the number of companions cannot be the problem in itself. However, Doctor Who is all about The Doctor. The Doctor is central to the story and the show. See how in this episode the companions were lost as to what to do when The Doctor was in prison, mainly, but not only, because they didn't have access to the TARDIS. It is also about The Doctor's relationship(s) with the companion(s) and with a single companion that relationship can be much more deeply explored than with several.

Apparently, there was a large number of Doctor Who shippers who had a particular interest in seeing a romantic pairing develop between The Doctor and Yaz, and who are now extremely upset at the John Bishop reveal.