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yeonchi · 4 years

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Doctor Who Series 12 Review: Prelude

Well everyone, Doctor Who is back and I’m getting on the train again. That’s right, I’m going to review the twelfth series of Doctor Who, also known as the second series with Jodie Whittaker as the Thirteenth Doctor.

As with last year’s reviews for Series 11, I’ll be posting my thoughts on every episode of Series 12 and rating them on a scale out of 10. I’ve created a new page on my Tumblr with all the links to my past reviews, which you can find here. Without further ado, let’s begin the review series prelude.

A year to mull over

In the past, I had more interest in Doctor Who because I was utilising aspects of it in a personal project of mine. Now that it’s pretty much coming to an end, I could have left the series after Peter Capaldi’s final episode, but I decided to give Jodie Whittaker a chance and maintain a casual interest in it if only for something to watch.

After mulling it over for a year and rewatching some clips of Series 11, I’ve found that I’ve gotten accustomed to the Thirteenth Doctor, even if her character is basically an expy of the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors. It’s given me quite a bit of time to think about what I would like to see in Series 12, particularly since the writing in Series 11 wasn’t necessarily up to par.

On an unrelated note, I did a review of a decade-old Australian-Spanish-Brazilian children’s cartoon series called Sea Princesses. I’m promoting this because some episodes of that series have an environmental theme to them and there is a rumour that there will be an environmental message somewhere in this series of Doctor Who. You can find it through this link.

Waiting periods

This really doesn’t matter to me now that I’ve downgraded myself to being a casual fan, but I want to complain about how the scheduling for this series has been all over the place since Series 6. If you look on Wikipedia, you can see when each series aired each year. Take the Christmas Specials into account and you’ll have an idea of how long we had to wait between episodes.

In the revived era, series used to go from March or April to June or July, but the split series in Series 6 and 7 were the first signs of the schedule starting to go all over the place. In all honesty, it was exasperating to wait for something related to The Day of the Doctor after Series 7′s finale, particularly given that the first trailer was exclusive to Comic Con.

In the Twelfth Doctor’s era, Series 8 and 9 went from August or September to November or December. There was a gap year in 2016 before Series 10 aired from April to July 2017. After the Thirteenth Doctor’s debut, Series 11 aired from October to December 2018, then 2019 was a gap year before Series 12 premieres from January to March 2020.

This doesn’t go to say that the timing of the classic era seasons weren’t all over the place at some points, but even then, they still managed to maintain regular schedules for as long as they could. I guess back in the days without the Internet, people actually had other things to do or watch without wondering when the next season of Doctor Who would air.

I’ve heard something on some forum somewhere about how Chris Chibnall likes to have a gap year between series like he did with Broadchurch, which might explain the 2019 gap year. But still, fans have waited before and I’m sure they would be happy to wait again. I just hope that the BBC can make their minds up about what time of year that Doctor Who will be on.

Four things I would like to see in Series 12

I would do five, but I couldn’t think of a fifth one.

1. No more misunderstood villains

This was my biggest problem with Series 11 - there were five such episodes where someone would be introduced as an antagonist based on their actions, but they are later revealed not to be because of their actual intentions that are sometimes unrelated to whatever problem the Doctor and her team are trying to solve. I probably wouldn’t care as much if there were only one or two misunderstood villains at most, but the fact that there are five of them with four in a row is really telling because the actual villains in those episodes turn out to be humans.

In regards to the “four in a row” thing, I’m counting the Pting as a misunderstood villain because it fed off the energy of the Tsuranga to thrive. It didn’t have any malice toward anyone onboard (except when they were disturbing his meal).

2. More character development for the companions

In Series 11, we saw an arc based on Ryan’s relationship with Graham and his father. Ryan was also mentioned to have dyspraxia while Yaz is a police officer, but those aspects weren’t fully explored in the series. I was hoping for Ryan’s dyspraxia to be mentioned in Resolution, but I guess they forgot about it. Let’s not forget the fact that Yaz has barely had any character development in Series 11 and the question of why the Doctor has such favouritism for her.

3. Explore the Timeless Child (story arcs)

The Timeless Child was something that the Remnants found inside the Doctor’s mind in The Ghost Monument. Along with the Stenza (and how everything was basically their fault), I thought that it would have been explored in the last series, but I guess I was partially mistaken. We don’t have any clue on what the Timeless Child might be, so I’m glad that it hasn’t been forgotten, at least for the time being.

On a side note, I don’t really mind whether the Stenza return or not. You could say that their story was done at the end of the last series, but then again, we only saw one of them, namely Tim Shaw. If we do see or hear about them again, it’ll give me more opportunities to continue the joke about how everything was Tim Shaw’s fault, because I really enjoyed it.

4. Returning monsters

The lack of returning monsters made Series 11 a bit bland. Combined with the lack of story arc and the number of human villains or misunderstood villains, I could argue that the writers didn’t quite know what to do with the new monsters they created.

At this point, we know for certain that the Judoon and Cybermen will be returning in Series 12. We already had the Daleks in Resolution, but that’s considered to be part of Series 11. However, in late October, some fans had snapped some Daleks in filming on Bristol’s Clifton Suspension Bridge. Since a Christmas special was confirmed, it is likely that they could be featuring in that.

Other matters

I won’t be reacting to the trailers for this series; I only did it in Series 11 because I was more concerned with how the series would be given that the first female Doctor was cast.

I’m feeling less concerned about SJW red flags this time around. Maybe it’s because I’m a bit dense or I wasn’t able to find much of them. As for tokusatsu references, I’ve realised that they might not be intentional and that I’m probably the one making these parallels to them. That’s not to say that I won’t be looking out for them, particularly the latter because I quite enjoyed doing it.

I think a lot of my concerns regarding the red flags were because I was following Bowlestrek’s videos during Series 11. I stopped watching his videos one day and gradually, he disappeared from my feed. I’m not saying I ever disagreed with what he said, but I do try to form my own opinions when I can and not be influenced by pessimism. At the same time, I’ve also dropped out from The Oldest Nerd’s reviews. I might try following him again for Series 12 because he does more level-headed reviews like I do (that is if I can even say that for myself). On an unrelated note, Jonathan Pie and Tim Pool are a couple of go-tos for insights on left-wing, right-wing and SJW culture, so never let it be said that I don’t try at the very least.

The first episode premieres on New Year’s Day and subsequent episodes premiere on Sundays. As such, we do get a de-facto New Year’s Special, but not a Christmas Special - the Christmas Special I mentioned earlier is likely to be for Christmas 2020, which is going to be a long way away again with no other specials after Series 12 is done.

Now, there is something I should tell everyone, which is that I’ll be going away for two weeks near the end of January, meaning that the episode reviews for the third, fourth and possibly fifth episodes will be delayed (for reference, the dates are 12, 19 and 26 January). I will probably be able to watch the episodes and possibly take some small notes on them, but I won’t be able to take detailed notes or write out the reviews until I get back to my home computer. I don’t know if I can release all the reviews within the week of 27 January, but I’ll try not to let the backlog snowball.

At the moment, I’m behind on other things, but I think I’ve covered most of what I want to cover without going any further into myth or rumour territory. I’ll see you all after the new year for the review of the first episode of Series 12, Skyfall Part One.

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