Whittaker’s performance reminds
me of the secondary school children I used to be in drama classes with. Every
line is given equal weight, hammered home aggressively to the point of
sterility due to the fact that they don’t really understand what they are
saying. Whittaker doesn’t make sense of her lines, finds no nuance, no
invention. It’s all delivered at the same urgent frequency. Just look at her
reactions when she’s asked about her family: There’s nothing there. No
decisions have been made. She’s all at sea. Resultantly, one starts to switch
off when she opens her mouth. My 14-year-old step-daughter guiltily looked up
half-way through the story and said, “I’m sorry but I’m finding her kind of
really annoying.” So was I. So was my wife. I inwardly cringed when Whittaker
raised her hand proudly and boasted, “I would of!” It was almost as bad as
Eccleston’s similarly mis-remembered, “Four most safest walls.” Now, I love a
Northern accent; I’ve got a broad Oldham drawl myself. But within that accent
there are all sorts of cadences, intricacies and details to play out. There’s
none of that here. Whittaker’s performance is poor. And Tosin Cole, this
episode’s leading companion Ryan, seems to be taking tips from her, as he’s
equally flat and stilted. Resultantly, the show feels very grounded in its
Sheffield landscape but populated by actors with accents which sap any drama
out of proceedings and make stretches of the show boring to listen to.
Aside from our lead performer
then, what else did The Woman Who Fell to
Earth have to offer? Firstly, and most obviously, the show feels truly
cinematic. The grading, the breadth and depth of the landscapes, the effects
from new-boys DNEG: all shine. There’s an epic shot which starts over the
football ground (Forgive me, footie fans, but I’m not sure if it was Wednesday
or United.) and pans across to a van we’re following. Those open Sheffield
vistas at the start of the story are impressive in their grandeur and the crane
business at the climax of the show looks to rival Casino Royale in terms of
scale. Directorially then, Jamie Childs does a splendid job, although there are
some moments which don’t land: The Doctor’s entrance through the train roof is
a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it shot, the death of Grace falls whackingly flat (if
you’ll forgive the pun) and there’s a money-shot missing of Whittaker leaping
from one crane to another. On the whole, however, this looks like properly modern,
21st century Doctor Who, feeling new, exciting and larger than ever
before. There are creepy, lingering moments which have been strikingly missing
from the show for a while too: the ball of energy creeping along the train
carriages; the assassin “icing” his victims to death. These are scenes which
feel like the very pulse of Doctor Who and if there’s more to come then the future
feels very bright.
Most importantly of all though is
the quality of what we all know to be the real star of the show: the script
from new-boy showrunner Chris Chibnall. Bluntly, it’s a mixed bag. The episode
was a refreshingly straightforward, linear narrative, easy to follow without continuity
references, perfect for newcomers. Funny, little clevernesses like the DNA
bombs and the microwave, which could easily have sprung from Chibnall’s better
Torchwood episodes, pushed the show’s playful tone to the fore but it’s a shame
there were fewer laughs. For the most part, there was a bleakness to this
script: the difficulties of disabilities, terminal diseases, warehouse work and
unfulfilled ambition providing a cynical skeleton to the character work. Even
the smaller parts were everyday losers, rather than Russell T Davies’s everyday
working class: a drunk throwing kebab around the place, a crane driver who
listens to an app telling him how important he is, a nutcase obsessed with
finding his dead sister. These archetypes may have brought the show down to
Earth but they’ve made the world of Doctor Who a grim place to be.
As for our three companions, I’m
still not sure I believe any of them and I’m not quite sure why. There are some
clunky dialogue choices from Chibnall (“Yaz to my friends,” indeed!) and he
hasn’t quite got the skill to sketch them in with as much adroit alacrity as
Russell T or even Steven Moffat. Compare Bill Potts’s first speech with Ryan’s
dreary YouTube video for proof. Bradley Walsh looks and plays Graham like a
kindly uncle but he’s written as a difficult-to-love Grandad. Ryan has
dyspraxia and is full of angst. Yaz wants early promotion. And that’s about it.
There’s not much charm radiating from these guys. In fact, the only keeper, I’d
say, was Grace who was “really loving” the alien bit. The fact that I wasn’t
remotely moved by her death and funeral perhaps says more about Chibnall’s
workmanlike writing than the performances. I’m not sure I even like the companions let them alone fully
believe in them. In fact, many things don’t stand up to scrutiny: Whose couch
did the Doctor kip on while the funeral was being arranged and why are the team
still allowed to use someone else’s garage?
Perhaps one of Chibnall’s key
strengths though was in the originality and vividness of his monsters. Tim Shaw
the Blue Tooth man was a properly evil badass and looked fittingly gross beneath
his frightening armour, shot so well by Jamie Childs. The removal of his
victims’ teeth and their subsequent implantation in his face was a macabre idea
the like of which has perhaps not been seen since Deep Breath. The ball of energy was frightening too in its indistinct,
aggressive nature. Chibnall hasn’t forgotten that Doctor Who is remembered for
being scary and there were scenes here to really unsettle the children: always
a great thing!
Our showrunner also has an eye
for spectacle too: this was an hour of television which included a train crash,
a climb across two cranes and an alien pod shaped like an onion hatching to
reveal a cyborg. The pulling together of these elements might not quite have
been as seamless as say, the set-pieces of Partners
in Crime or The Eleventh Hour but
there was still structural ingenuity to be had: that the DNA bombs had already
been removed was a welcome surprise, showcasing the Doctor’s invention and forward-planning.
The missing sister subplot looks to be the route the story is taking and then
is abandoned after the shocking death of her brother, another opportunity for
our villain to be thoroughly evil rather than a misunderstood robot. It makes for
an even stronger tete-a-tete atop a tower crane with Jodie Whittaker in her
best scene by a mile, although the “sorting out fair play across the universe”
line was a little mawkish.
All in all, it’s a very difficult
episode to review. There’s a freshness to the show, that’s for sure but the new
world seems to adopt a cynical, sometimes dour, tone. The villains are
tremendous and worthy of the Doctor’s mettle and Chris Chibnall delights in a set-piece.
There’s a cinematic scope to the “alien vistas” of Sheffield and it must be
said, a bloody cracking cliff-hanger. I’m unbelievably and disproportionately
excited by the fact that the sting was played out in full over a couple of
shots of our heroes in space, and I’m chuffed that the theme’s playing over the
Next Time trailers for the first time in ages. (I wrote to DWM about this
nitty-gritty issue a while back and I’m going to take full responsibility for
its rectification!) The companions need more exploration and I hope Chibnall’s
playing a long game in terms of their characterisation. The only great, glaring
irritation for me was, sadly, Jodie Whittaker who I honestly feel doesn’t have the
chops for this. I’m sure there’ll be millions who disagree but as my dad said
last year, “If they were going to cast a woman from Broadchurch, why didn’t
they cast the good one?”
6/10
6/10
JH
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