bspittles wrote: ↑29 Jan 2020, 18:13
This weekend’s episode was a classic. Unexpected characters and lots of unanswered questions. The best, IMO, for a few years.
It's definitely a classic compared to everything else from the Chris Chibnall era. If that's damning it with faint praise, perhaps that's fair. Over the last year or so I went through the whole Tennant & Smith eras, plus a bit of Capaldi, with my son, which was great fun. He'd light up when seeing a Stephen Moffat episode was on its way and got completely into the twists and turns and links. The first Jodie Whittaker series left us a bit cold really - we watched it but didn't enjoy it anywhere near as much as what came before. I can understand wanting a different approach but it was perhaps trying too hard to be different, while like others I remain unconvinced by a trio of assistants.
The odd thing about this series is that it seems a complete reversal and is regularly bringing in strands from the past. It's obviously going to centre around the destruction of Gallifrey but that scene where The Master tells the Doctor what's happened seemed to foretell that Chibnall is going to rip up everything that's gone before and re-write the history to his own style. If so, we'll have to see if it comes off or not.
A cynic might wonder if he'd been given a steer that his new style had alienated too many committed viewers without bringing in enough new ones, so was asked to try and bring back some of the Moffat/Russell T Davies era fans - and that his answer is to bring back the characters, enemies and locations but to deliberately trash the plots that went before....
All that said, I'll be watching tomorrow to see what comes next!