Not sure how I feel about this being dealt with as a new "show" rather than a new season of "Nu Who", but I guess it gives me an excuse to jump away from reviewing every episode of that iteration and to start again from here.
Introducing Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson) to how the Tardis works lands she, and the Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) on a space station manned by a crew of babies, seemingly abandoned by their creators and looked after by an overseeing computer (Golda Rosheuvel). The abandonment isn't the crews only problem though as, in the lower decks, between them and the Tardis is a vicious looking creature nicknamed "The Bogeyman".
Mixed feelings about this episode. The good news is that I liked the elements that are going to stay, for this season at least. Gatwa and Gibson are both great and there's a nice dynamic between them. It's got some funny lines and it's continuing to do what Davies' previous run did and layering in the season story - which looks like it will be focused on Ruby's parentage, the mystery of which began in the last Christmas special.
The actual episode though was a bit confused and had some horrible CGI. The creature effect was fine, if perhaps a little generic. The CGI mouths of the talking babies though was both badly done and off putting, and I really didn't like seeing it. The show also felt confused as to whether they were actual babies though, I think the logic was that they were 6-year-olds that hadn't developed but they didn't act like that sometimes. (Also, that's not how an airlock would work). The Disney Dollars seemed to have been spent on a CGI dinosaur world that appeared earlier and shots of the Tardis.
Davies is perhaps a bolder writer now, from the shows he's written since his first run with The Doctor, and, whilst the show has always been socially conscious, there are explicit analogies made about both the abortion laws and refugee policy within this story.
Whilst this first episode is a bit underwhelming, particularly to proclaim the shows new start, I'm not overly concerned that the shows headed in the wrong direction or anything like that. Hopefully, without the need to do all the introductions stuff from now on, and with more time for the story, things will pick up.
