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moonlitlex · 3 months ago

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ok. final thoughts on doctor who season 14 (2024) (because maybe if i say all of this i will finally stop thinking about how much i hate this season)

short version: i'm this season's biggest hater. if this season has a million haters im one of them. if this season has 1000 haters i'm still one of them. if this season has one hater it's me. if this season has no haters it means i have left this world. if the world is against this season i am with the world

long & nuanced version (under the cut)

i'm just really, really, really disappointed. i've always said that good writing can redeem any project, and it kind of feels like they just took it in the exact opposite direction this time. there's so much that went wrong and like 99% of it is down to the writing. i did a rant on my youtube channel (which i'm not gonna link here because i want to keep these accounts separate) and it was like an hour long so i'm not gonna go into detail but i'll just go over my main issues with this season

fifteen lacks depth. i think he's a very generic doctor lacking his own eccentricities. after the first season the doctor usually has quite a distinct personality, but i don't think we got that with fifteen. just compare the kind of characterization fifteen has at this point to like... eleven in his first season. he was a lot more fleshed out. we got to see multiple facets of his personality. it seems like they tried this with fifteen but everything we got to see ended up being really surface level. the susan thing just kind of happens. the rogue thing just kind of happens. he faces racism and he's just kind of incredulous and then the episode ends. it's not explored. the show just moves on to the next thing and we don't get to see how he deals with it.

ruby lacks depth. similarly, i think ruby is a very generic companion. she's a young woman from present day london which isn't in and of itself a bad thing but it's not backed up by much. like, what do we actually know about ruby? she's adopted? she was left on a church doorstep by her biomom? she loves her mom but is still disappointed she can't find her bio parents? these are all plot relevant things. what do we know about her outside of the stuff that is necessary for the plot? job? friends? life before the doctor? there are a few tiny glimpses, but not enough to make her a developed character.

fifteen and ruby's relationship is boring. they never fight. they never disagree. they never argue. they're never angry with each other. they never challenge each other on anything. they're shown to have this amazing best-friend rapport but it's never developed or fleshed out. it just kind of happens. one second they're meeting and the next second they're bffs who never disagree about anything and are always on the same page. it's just not an interesting dynamic.

i found ten and donna to be a very compelling dynamic but that's because they actually have a real friendship and have to deal with conflict and challenges and disagreements. times when the doctor and companion challenge each other are interesting. this is a feature of some really beloved doctor who stories for a reason. dalek wouldn't be so well loved if rose just agreed with nine the entire time. the conflict makes the story more compelling. meanwhile ruby can't even muster an ounce of discontentment with fifteen for the entire season.

season finale payoffs were not compelling and are in my opinion a result of prioritizing shock and surprise and social media buzz at time of release over telling an interesting story.

sutekh is not automatically a compelling villain and the way that arc is written is so... bland. he appears and kills everyone and the next episode they just hit the reset button. fine, doctor who has done this before, but there was interesting character writing back then to distract you from the baffling story decisions.

the season 3 finale had flying jesus ten but it also had interesting character dynamics. this one had sutekh defeated in the most confusing way possible (if he got his power from the time vortex why is it killing him now....) but there's barely anything going on in the character department. it's rtd so i expected hamfisted deus ex machinas, but i didn't expect the lack of care on the character front.

the susan thing was just... it came out of nowhere, didn't really make much sense, and then it immediately disappeared. the doctor thinking it's his susan was just confusing for me and it didn't land. like why would susan.... do that? why would she be basically following him around the universe by weaving herself into the scenery everywhere he landed? this is never even addressed. they just get the tardis anagram and he immediately jumps to it being his susan and you're not really sure why he's so convinced and it's never really explained.

ruby's mom being a normal woman literally just doesn't make any sense. it's never explained. "we thought she was really important" doesn't just do all the inexplicable things. why and how is ruby able to make it snow if her mom is just a normal person? why does the song in his soul scare maestro so much? why is sutekh of all people unable to figure out who her mother is? the reveal is played as a criticism of the audience for building up ruby's mom to be this huge mystery, but it wasn't the audience doing this - it was the writers. these are the clues they laid out and they're never explained. "doctor who is more fantastical now" also doesn't make any sense. fantasy has rules too. you can't just do whatever you want. the world still has to be internally consistent. the reveal by itself is a nice moment but it's just disappointing that they decided to laugh at the audience for taking their show seriously.

i've seen a lot of people compare ruby's mom thing with clara's impossible girl thing. i would like to point out 2 differences that make clara's impossible girl arc superior. first - clara's impossible girl arc never tries to weasel its way out of the mystery. the point is that who clara is is more important than the mystery surrounding her. ruby's mom mystery tries to erase the mystery entirely. second - clara's impossible girl arc is resolved the way it is because of clara. clara is a person who takes an action because of who she is. it shows courage and selflessness and care for her friend. ruby's mom mystery is solved by ruby and the doctor finding a database where they can match ruby's dna to her mom's. it doesn't say anything about her character. her character is irrelevant to the resolution.

i've also seen it compared to the hybrid thing from season 9, but with the hybrid there was never anything unexplainable happening in the first place so "it was just the characters obsessing about it all along" makes sense because it literally is just the characters bringing up the hybrid all the time.

the individual episodes are not... good. here are my opinions on each of them

church on ruby road - ok introduction, weird pacing, the goblin song was just tonally off compared to the rest of the episode

space babies - genuinely makes the doctor seem like a sadistic asshole at times like he keeps laughing at the literal babies for being scared of the monster and this is played for laughs (???), boogeyman reveal thing literally came out of nowhere there was no setup and it made no sense and was never really explained, a lot of tonal whiplash in this episode, poor exposition choices at the start

devils chord - maestro was a fun performance but nothing else about this episode is interesting, there are no beatles, the 4th wall breaks are tonally inconsistent with the rest of the season

boom - ruby gets sidelined but making ncuti act without being able to move any of his body slaps as a concept and while it was too on the nose, the thematic messaging aspects of this episode are coherent and don't talk down to the audience, some side characters get to be relevant to the story and moderately developed (mundy, splice, the dad), splice's actor was far too old to be delivering those lines and it didn't land well, the dad ai defeating the ambulance ai was a bit too much but was in line with the power of love and faith theme so i'm conflicted on how i feel about that

73 yards - did nothing right. there are a few minutes of good welsh folk horror at the start before that aspect of the story is undermined by those people in the pub. ruby gets no character development. the horror atmosphere is abandoned at the start and the horror concept is abandoned entirely partway through the story in favour of the political stuff with roger ap gwilliam, which is kind of resolved in a really anticlimactic scene which doesn't matter anyway because everything just gets undone at the end of the episode. there are no answers.

it's not a good horror story because 90% of it isn't horror. it's not a good political drama because nothing happens. it's not a good character study because we don't get to know anything about ruby's character. i genuinely think rtd has forgotten the kind of stuff he's written because he called this the best thing he's ever written and it's literally not even in the top 10 doctor who episodes he's ever written. like midnight is right there. the waters of mars is RIGHT THERE. this episode is all setup and no payoff.

also - i might just be autistic, but the "can i pay with my phone" joke doesn't land because not everyone can actually accept digital payments yet! it's like... an extremely normal question to ask. i literally ask all the time unless i see an "apple pay accepted" sign because sometimes the answer is "no, we only take cash or card". i know it was supposed to be something about how ruby thinks she's in the past or welsh people getting wrongly stereotyped for being backward but maybe rtd should've come up with a line that would actually be offensive and not just a completely normal thing to ask in 2024.

dot and bubble - this is probably my most controversial take. i hate this episode. i think it's a poorly written bad episode. and furthermore i think only people who are disconnected from all discussion around racism think it's got genuinely good commentary. for MOST of this episode, it's a "kids be on they damn phones" thing. like, genuinely. lindy can't even WALK without her phone. there's nothing in the episode to tip us as the audience off to the idea that the dots hate them because they're racist. everything in the episode is pointing at "the dots hate them because they're stupid as fuck because they're always on that damn phone".

lindy at first seems like a flawed but sympathetic character, and this could genuinely have worked with the racism commentary. if it's about them being racist cause they're sooooooo fucking stupid, maybe don't have lindy be an irredeemable extremely racist character who kills someone. maybe she's repeating all the rhetoric she's heard her entire life without ever thinking about it. maybe trying to convince her racist friends to give the doctor a chance gets her socially isolated. maybe it's about echo chambers and social bubbles. maybe lindy as an individual has no malicious intent either way but she still behaves in a racist way and still ends up siding with the racists because they're her friends and she wants to fit in and be part of the in group and trying to not be racist because the doctor seemed kinda nice got her socially ostracized so she perpetuates racism regardless. but none of this is what happens. this is a reading you can get out of it if you're really dedicated to reading into a story written by a guy who doesn't give a shit about racism.

lindy and all her friends are stupid and bad and racist and the doctor is still desperate to save them for some fucking reason and he doesn't even get to SAY anything to them, he just laughs incredulously and that's his entire reaction. the commentary in this episode is baby's first lesson on racism. it's a message of "racism is bad and stupid" tacked onto an episode with a message of "being on your phone is bad and stupid".

it's shallow. it has nothing to say. it's very clearly a story about racism written by a white man who has never had to even think about racism. the entire writer's room for this season was white as well. rtd didn't even think he should maybe consider giving the racism episode to a black writer. he just wrote a full episode where the message is "racism is bad you guys" and patted himself on the back for his social commentary. i think it's embarrassing that people praise this episode for opening their eyes to racism in the real world and helping them understand it better. literally all that tells me is they've been closing their eyes and covering their ears every time a person of colour talks about racism. like black fans have literally been talking about racism in doctor who for decades and clearly none of you listened to any of them because you're here watching an episode with an "omg racism is bad guys" message going "wow, i never though about it like that!" that's because you're an asshole.

"wow i didn't even notice that everyone in this episode is white!" that's because that's not out of the ordinary for doctor who. or for television in general. this isn't revolutionary commentary. it's an indictment of the season 14 writer's room that they thought they could write this episode without even taking a look around their own writer's room and thinking "huh, everyone here is white too. maybe we should try to change that." this show has been predominantly white for MOST of its history. i'm a huge critic of the chibnall era but at least that guy hired poc to write for the show. at least the bad racism commentary in rosa (which was, to remind you, "the future racist is wrong. racism is bad. also the entire civil rights movement was basically a happy accident") was written by a black woman. at least the weird british empire glorifying shit in the partition episode was written by an indian man (to be clear, stuff written by poc also deserves to be criticized. my point is just that at least chibnall had the basic common sense to hire people who knew more than him to write these stories). rtd didn't even consider this. not even a cowriter.

it's just embarrassing to watch white fans falling over themselves analyzing how this episode is soooo deep when it's simply not. racism isn't silly goofy stupid. it's dangerous. it gets people killed every day. it's even more ridiculous that the racism is addressed in the future episode but not anywhere else! fifteen goes to 60s england and... nothing. he goes to 1800s england and nothing. sure, future people are racist. whatever. are we seriously sanitizing the real, actual, real life racist past of britain? and then patting ourselves on the back for it? and ricky september being considered not racist? like, reading a book doesn't suddenly make you not racist. racist people aren't necessarily idiots. plenty of highly educated people are racist. making ricky explicitly racist while also a clearly smart character would have added nuance to this episode, but rtd didn't do that. watching a black man beg and plead with rich racist white kids to please let him save their lives is just... ridiculous.

there are countless (and i do mean countless) works by actual people of colour that discuss racism in a far more nuanced way. that go beyond "racism is bad and racist people are stupid". there are specifically black british shows you can watch that actually address racism and have real commentary on it outside of what you would expect a toddler who has just learnt about prejudice to say. shows that aren't about coddling while people. watch shows made by and for people who aren't white. read books written by and for people who aren't white. and don't just watch and read this stuff to "educate yourself" on other people's experiences. watch it because it's art. because it's entertaining or funny or interesting or dramatic, just like stories that are about white people are allowed to be. and stop praising an episode with a racism is bad message for being good racism commentary. seriously. we already know racism is bad. this is embarrassing for you.

dot and bubble was a "kids be on they damn phones episode" with "racism is so bad guys" tacked onto it and white fans fell over themselves explaining how it opened their eyes and it was so deep and meaningful and powerful and it was none of those things. it was bland and shallow and honestly really boring they spend WAY too long hitting us over the head with how the kids are so stupid cause they're on their damn phones. you should be embarrassed. if this episode was the first thing that made me realize racism exists and is bad you couldn't waterboard that out of me. grow up.

rogue - rogue was an underdeveloped jack harkness ripoff, there's no development of the relationship between him and the doctor, ruby got nothing to do, the proposal came out of nowhere, the chuldurs were an interesting concept but they literally didn't even do any of the larping they were there for apart from the one who was lady emily. murder is not a prominent part of bridgerton or similar regency era romances that they were supposedly there to cosplay

legend of ruby sunday - this episode is literally 99% exposition. like i'm not joking. there's exposition and exposition and exposition for the whole episode and at the end sutekh appears and kills everyone. also "i will kill everyone" is like. not a compelling motivation. doctor who is full of guys who want to kill everyone. there's nothing making sutekh particularly scary or compelling apart from the fact that he thanos snapped the whole universe and that's also not particularly scary or compelling because he spares the main characters AND because you know they're gonna hit the comic book reset button next episode. sutekh being attached to the tardis since pyramids of mars is unconvincing personally (it would've made more sense if it was since wild blue yonder)

empire of death - ??????? ruby's mom is just a normal woman. they leash sutekh like a dog and drag him through the time vortex which kills him for some reason and also hits reset on his kill switch for the whole universe and that just fixes everything. ruby calls her biomom her real mom instead of carla which just really rubbed me the wrong way. she exits the tardis to stay with her family and it's... fine. you never see why ruby and the doctor were attached to each other so them saying goodbye doesn't hit home. nothing happens and then suddenly everything happens. the fact that the reveal is unconvincing makes the whole thing worse.

conclusion: i think rtd ran out of ideas for doctor who. i think he shouldn't have come back. i think the 60th specials were season 4 fanfiction. i think they should've given the showrunner position to a different writer entirely. i think 8 episodes is far too short for a doctor who season (flux being an exception because it was one ongoing story). i think the bigger budget and better production value can't save a show with poor writing. i think gatwa and gibson are acting their hearts out and i wish they had better material because i really like both of them in these roles. i'm also kind of sick of murray gold's music at this point. he won't let emotional moments just sit and it's really annoying how every time anything happens there's a swell of music. i think rtd should give up on racism commentary and just hire someone else who can do it justice if he really wants it to be in his show. i think rtd should shift focus back to the characters and their interpersonal relationships because that's what he's good at and his plot resolutions have always been underwhelming deus ex machinas. i think they should give this show more episodes. i think they should change the broadcasting times to be a better slot in the uk and the episode should go up on streaming at the same time or after it airs. this season has little glimpses of potential (some of boom, first few minutes of 73 yards, episode concepts in general are quite interesting, more fantasy in doctor who is a fun concept) but squanders all of it with flat characters. i started dreading watching the next episode after a while because i kept hoping it would be good and then i would hate it.

but i still care too much about doctor who to not watch the show so i guess i'll be here this time next year picking season 15 apart. woo.

#alexis.exe #dw crit #doctor who critical #dw critical #rtd critical #dw #ik i wrote the longest thing about dot and bubble but hoenstly thats not because i hate it the most #thats because its one of the most loved episodes and its genuinely getting praise that it doesnt deserve #like if someone says whatever the fuck was going on in 73 yards like #i disagree very strongly but also like whatever man #but dot and bubble getting praised for like #its racism commentary #when the racism commentary is #that racism.#is bad #im sorry are you guys fucking toddlers #personally i wouldnt publically admit ive never listened to a person of colour talk but you do you #personally i would never publically admit i've been ignoring everything fans and critics and news outlets and everyone has been saying #about racism and society and prejudice and so on and so forth #for like. ever #but especially for the last few years #ik mainstream news has a bad habit of like #making real issues a big topic of discussion for like 3 weeks and then immediately going back to ignoring them #but like #were you guys like. not listening any time that happened recently #like did you just close your eyes #and now youre praising a white man for daring to say that racism is. bad #grow UP #my god.

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