Chris Chibnall isn’t going to win any awards for being particularly revolutionary with this New Year’s 70-minute special. All the ingredients are there for a classic story, full of Doctor Who staples: the Daleks out of their shells; the inevitable production line; their blinkered human allies hoist by their own hubris; Captain Jack doing the heavy duty action heroics; the departing scenes of not one but two companions. So what’s wrong with it? Why is it so unaffecting? Why doesn’t it make the heart pound and break by turns?
Workmanlike is a word I feel I’ve
used a lot to describe Chibnall’s writing (as well as clunky) but by workmanlike
I mean you can distinctly see the writing at work. You can see how the plotting
has been spreadsheeted, the “character moments” positioned, the fates of
characters foregrounded because his approach is so cliched and hackneyed. Goodness,
he even uses the sentence, “You’re meddling in things you don’t understand.” At
his worst, Russell T Davies’s writing could sometimes feel like a string of
fantastic events and character beats held together by an often very thin
thread. Chibnall’s fantastic events aren’t particularly fantastic, his
character beats aren’t particularly hard hitting and his threads are bare.
We start with a flashback to the
2019 New Year’s Day episode. It’s odd. As if the production team are asking
viewers to remember that staggeringly amazing special from a few years ago. But
it’s badly gauged. It leads into a scene in which a dead Dalek is transported
in the back of a van. Surely, the moment we’re waiting for is the twitch of an
eyestalk or a blinking light? Instead, it stays dead and we have a clunking poisoning
scene which relies on the killer knowing exactly which mobile tea unit the
victim is destined to visit. Far better surely to have the reveal of the Daleks
in the riot scene, where they can be spotlighted in all their newly armoured
glory and open with an exciting prison break?
Unfortunately, the prison break is
not in any way heroic or clever. We don’t see the Doctor even planning an
escape. Instead, our heroine pines away in her cell mournfully reciting Harry
Potter. Talk about a teenage fan girl. This is exactly what Jodie’s Doctor
feels like generally: someone trying so hard to be the quirky, eccentric hero
she worships and getting it so astronomically wrong. It’s as if even Chibnall has
noticed. He keeps his leading lady away from the screen for very long sections
of the programme and in last season’s finale had her fall asleep while the
Master read her an audiobook. I honestly wonder how this casting came about. When
The Woman Who Fell to Earth aired, I was delighted to be feeling positive
about a female Doctor, the gender of our lead suddenly seemed surprisingly irrelevant
but I have never been thrilled by any decisions made by Whittaker herself and
here she reminds us in every single scene why she is such a poor choice for
this role. Her dialogue, however off-beat it may be, never strikes me as real.
She cannot handle the meter, the jargon or even the tone. I look at her and
wonder if she has any idea at all as to what her dialogue actually means. “So
it looks like a Dalek but it can’t be a Dalek unless it is a Dalek,” she
garbles, trampling over all possible meaning that line could have had. She
doesn’t know which words to stress, how the gag works, how to play that line.
It’s incredibly infuriating to see one of the biggest leading roles on
television handed to someone who does not understand dialogue which is in any way
heightened.
Captain Jack is a welcome note of
cheap campery. At least he would be if he were given anything to do that was
cheap or camp. Honestly, he doesn’t even flirt with anyone except Graham and
that’s a repeated gag from Fugitive of the Judoon. I can’t think of a character
less suited to giving emotional advice to the current companions than Captain Jack
but that’s what he seems to be here for. His big scene with Yaz is the best of
the episode but it really isn’t what Jack is about. He gets to fire a gun once
and look delighted to be immortal but he’s frankly wasted. And he doesn’t even
get a goodbye scene! Instead, he leaves in a clearly dubbed phone-call, as if
he were an afterthought. It’s as ham-fisted as Chibnall at his most typical.
Even Chris Noth seems to be
camping it up more than Barrowman. His performance here is far broader than the
star-quality he delivered in Arachnids in the UK. Despite having the
best lines, he overplays them and they occasionally fall flat. Harriet Walter
is dignified, making the most of the little she has to do and is exterminated
too soon.
By the time we reach Clifton
Suspension Bridge, the tension is all but depleted and it’s a struggle to care.
To use the spare TARDIS (which perhaps we should have been introduced to in the
pre-titles sequence rather than the Dalek) to solve the problem like the Daleks
seems over-simple given the episode’s runtime and the protracted goodbye
scenes, whilst refreshingly free from the overwrought or the fantastic, don’t feel
in any way earned.
Perhaps with a different TARDIS
crew, the next series might feel breezier, fresher but the over-riding feeling
that Revolution of the Daleks leaves us with is one of tiredness. For
over two years, we’ve seen a badly cast quartet of actors tackling lines which more
experienced, more talented, cleverer actors might have managed to deliver.
They are routinely upstaged by guest stars and have seemed ill-formed and badly
managed as characters. The problems with much of the Chibnall/Whittaker era are
in evidence here and writ large: good ideas badly handled, tense scenes devoid
of tension, a lack of finesse in plotting and dialogue and a leading cast who completely
fail to engage. Luckily, we have the best one staying on: and it’s Mandip Gill.
3/10
JH
