Eve of the Daleks

A TARDIS reboot causes an ever-shrinking temporal stutter that the Daleks exploit as an opportunity to kill the Doctor. I like these kinds of time-loop stories, in which lessons from each iteration can be applied to solve an overall problem, and so I generally liked this episode despite the tedious, irritating and unnecessary secondary characters. Even though the most feared creatures in the universe can be slow-moving and lousy shots (when the plot demands it), any adventure featuring the polycarbide-armored malignant blobs is usually worth the couch time. That said, I still dislike Jodie Whittaker's goofy 'people's doctor' (she is a Time Lord after all, not some moderately advanced monkey like we are) and the flippant, jejune script and strained attempts at humour undermined what could have been a particularly clever story. Hopefully if the Doctor decides to engage in some inter-specific miscegenation, it will be with something interesting (like a Zygon or a Denebian slime devil).

Well I enjoyed this, I thought actually it was the best episode of the show I'd seen in a long time.

Funny, romantic, and reasonably easy to get your head around - I don't see why it's being slated quite so much here.

Good fun.

It definitely improved the longer it went in but the middle section was awful. I did enjoy parts of this episode. There are some genuinely great moments here like Dan's confrontation of The Daleks and anything related to The Doctor and Yaz's relationship. The new characters weren't great but their performances were pretty good. The Daleks were all over the place though. Sometimes they were good and sometimes they were absolutely stupid. The "duck" moment is one of the worse scenes in New Who. The concept itself is great and it's executed decently well but the story could have been more interesting. I said it in my Letterboxd review Best, some genuinely great moments in a scattershot episode. Looking forward to Spring though.

I'm one of Chibnall's biggest critics. I've not been a fan of his writing since about halfway through his first season. I thought Flux was a mess. He crammed in way too much and tried way too hard.

Eve of the Daleks he got back to basics. It was simple but straightforward. To avoid spoilers things seemed to flow a lot better. The romancing The Doctor schtick has gotten old... The doctor is an alien. Why do humans keep forgetting that and falling in love with him/her? My other criticism is that the Daleks don't usually miss, and it seems as though they were training with their new firepower with Storm Troopers. They couldn't hit the broad side of a barn. Otherwise a solid effort.

After two New Years specials that seemed like just two out of place normal episodes, Chibnall finally manages to balance a festive story that works really well!

The loop concept is amazing. Although the daleks are still underused like in the other two times, this one doesn't bother, actually it's a lot of fun.

What a wonderful addition John Bishop was to this cast, Dan is such a charismatic and wonderful character. Jodie Whittaker is very comfortable in her role as Doctor, always surprising. And Mandip delivers really exciting scenes as Yaz.

What an episode!