This week’s instalment of the brand-new, spruced up version
of that show we used to know as Doctor Who starts with ten minutes of the most
visually arresting material the series has ever put on screen. The new title
sequence itself is beautiful, new and old at the same time, with a great
underwater backwards dive a few seconds in before the ubiquitous musical howl
kicks us into space. Its only problem as far as I can see is its brevity. Then
we’re plunged headlong into a world of starships and planets.
Quite wonderfully, we witness the arrival of our heroes in the spaceships from the perspectives of our characters. We see more of the inside than the out of these craft – which look magnificent in all their CG glory – and the colour palette within is rich and deep and otherworldly. Then we’re on an alien planet which feels genuine in a way that matte shots and CG vistas simply cannot emulate. Here we have a desert, a sea, a mountain range and an empty city, each location as convincing and bold as the one before, all real places. The money shot though is that furiously crashing spaceship. Graham, Ryan and Angstrom run desperately through the sand as the ship plummets through the sky towards them. Never has a spaceship felt so very present in a Doctor Who story and this is just the sort of visual flamboyance the show has perhaps missed over the last three years. It feels like a long time since Big Ben being destroyed or a hospital on the moon or even a giant dinosaur in London, but the opening of The Ghost Monument, together with last week’s crane stunts, suggests Chris Chibnall has an eye for a punctuating visual.
The plot itself is intriguing but slight: a race to the other
side of Desolation. For the most part the action is pacey though the stretch across
the ocean threatens to knock the wind of its sails, for wont of a better term. Chibnall
uses these quieter moments to look at his characters but the writing is a little
on the nose and lacks grace. I found myself finishing Epzo’s predictable story
for him and the scenes between Graham and Ryan are a little unpolished and lack
truth. Chibnall writes with a lot of heart but he hasn’t got a great ear for dialogue.
Still, better to have heart than pure purple prose.
We also get to see our new Doctor in action, perhaps more stabilised than last week. To be frank, I still have major misgivings about Jodie Whittaker as Doctor Who. Her breathy, forced delivery feels patronising, as if she needs to explain her performance choices to us as she makes them. The technobabble doesn’t sound at all natural and she plays the cliched reading of her more dramatic lines every single time. I’m sincerely hoping I’ll either get used to her or she’ll get better. She simply needs to relax; treat the lines as if she says this kind of every day. At the minute, she is ploughing every ounce of energy into even the most mundane line and becoming grating. This is a woman who I thought was outstanding in Broadchurch so I’m struggling to see what’s gone so wrong. Perhaps Ms Whittaker is just very limited.
Tragically, after all the imaginative panoramas, beautiful landscapes and design innovation, the new TARDIS set is awful, isn’t it? For a kick-off, it’s far too small: the ceiling is too low and the room feels claustrophobic. It’s the only room in the show so far to have felt like a set. The over-sized, orange, crystalline plinths mean there’s no space for a four shot by the console. It almost looks as if it’s been shot against black drapes, so dark and seemingly non-existent are the walls. And the custard cream maker is neither funny nor kooky. When everything else this series is so wondrous to look at, it’s a shame the TARDIS doesn’t seem to stand for anything: it isn’t homely, atmospheric, sterile, magical or sensory. It’s just black and orange.
I must make mention of Susan Lynch and Shaun Dooley who bring a re-assuring and welcome earthiness to an entirely outlandish adventure, their regional accents routing the drama in reality. I’m still not convinced by our main cast, although Bradley Walsh stole all the glory this week after an unsure start in The Woman Who Fell to Earth. All in all though, for a story taking in so many alien environments, this was an easy-to-follow, linear adventure, full of exciting set-pieces and stunning visuals. It wasn’t a story that was actually about very much though and the set-pieces sometimes felt like the skeleton of a story that wasn’t really there. Hopefully, next week, we’ll have something just as beautiful but a little meatier to digest.
We also get to see our new Doctor in action, perhaps more stabilised than last week. To be frank, I still have major misgivings about Jodie Whittaker as Doctor Who. Her breathy, forced delivery feels patronising, as if she needs to explain her performance choices to us as she makes them. The technobabble doesn’t sound at all natural and she plays the cliched reading of her more dramatic lines every single time. I’m sincerely hoping I’ll either get used to her or she’ll get better. She simply needs to relax; treat the lines as if she says this kind of every day. At the minute, she is ploughing every ounce of energy into even the most mundane line and becoming grating. This is a woman who I thought was outstanding in Broadchurch so I’m struggling to see what’s gone so wrong. Perhaps Ms Whittaker is just very limited.
Tragically, after all the imaginative panoramas, beautiful landscapes and design innovation, the new TARDIS set is awful, isn’t it? For a kick-off, it’s far too small: the ceiling is too low and the room feels claustrophobic. It’s the only room in the show so far to have felt like a set. The over-sized, orange, crystalline plinths mean there’s no space for a four shot by the console. It almost looks as if it’s been shot against black drapes, so dark and seemingly non-existent are the walls. And the custard cream maker is neither funny nor kooky. When everything else this series is so wondrous to look at, it’s a shame the TARDIS doesn’t seem to stand for anything: it isn’t homely, atmospheric, sterile, magical or sensory. It’s just black and orange.
I must make mention of Susan Lynch and Shaun Dooley who bring a re-assuring and welcome earthiness to an entirely outlandish adventure, their regional accents routing the drama in reality. I’m still not convinced by our main cast, although Bradley Walsh stole all the glory this week after an unsure start in The Woman Who Fell to Earth. All in all though, for a story taking in so many alien environments, this was an easy-to-follow, linear adventure, full of exciting set-pieces and stunning visuals. It wasn’t a story that was actually about very much though and the set-pieces sometimes felt like the skeleton of a story that wasn’t really there. Hopefully, next week, we’ll have something just as beautiful but a little meatier to digest.
6/10
JH
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