Orphan 55

Imagine someone asks a 12 year old child to write a Science Fiction story, get every cliche in the book and put it into a blender, and bam, you have this episode.

It feels like nobody knew what to do with this episode, how to give the message or what was it about. At first I got big Emoji Bot vibes, and then... everything tunrs so stupid you can't help but to laugh. Twist after twist is just a mess, you just can belive someone wrote this and thought "Yes, this is Doctor Who Material". There is even one scene that leaves you "Is Doctor Who seriously doing that kind of scene?", I mean, is not a bad message, is never a bad message, and is canon in Doctor Who, even The Mysterious Planet did it, but the way they did it was... so hillariously bad.

I miss Spyfall already, because this, while is not Season 11 bad where it was so bad it's infuriating, it's still a kind of bad that you have to watch to belive that someone pulled this off.

I actually like the opening sequence, its a nice throwback to Tom Baker Era Doctor Who. That's the good bits out of the way. This episode was sadly a throwback to Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy era. The first Alien they are greeted by looks like a reject from Cats stage show, the Mechanics with Green hair were awful and the Dregs were well......the Dregs to be honest. An unoriginal story done pretty badly and not very special effects top off this awful, predictable episode. I don't know how much longer I will be giving this show the benefit, last Season was poor, so far this is much worse. They wanted a Female Doctor, the least they could do is provide her with better material to work with.

While the visuals have never been better for Doctor Who, the whole show is being sabotaged by the pedestrian vision of the show-runner, the non-existence of the personalities of two of the Doctor's companions (Ryan and Yaz) and the woeful inadequacies of the lead, Jodie Whittaker. Adding to the problems is the choice of writers for these stories, who all seem to wish they were writing for any other genre than science-fantasy. The entire style and wit of the show has vanished under an avalanche of social responsibility and fashionable points of view regarding politics which, while being laudable, are ham-fistedly represented and have been focussed on at the expense of story and imagination. It's all rather weak and obvious in comparison to previous eras of the show, and - after an energetic and expensive-looking opening story - this one is a return to the lows of the previous season. The only stuff that works are the elements which have been stolen from earlier, better episodes of the show. You can afford to miss this, but while the current show-runner is at the helm, and Whittaker is at the controls of the TARDIS - don't hold your breath waiting for anything to improve.

The doctor and her groupies conveniently end up at a simulated resort on a near-dead planet only to find out an inconvenient truth. The plot is simply an excuse to string together some monster footage (reasonably well done) and to set-up a heavy-handed 'message' typical of the show's increasing self-righteousness. The script is silly, plot-holes and coincidences abound, and the cast is showing no signs of improving (although at least Jodie Whittaker cuts back a bit on the 'lovably goofy' shtick). The Doctors increasingly convenient 'psychic powers' (last week it was memory erasure, this week it's mind reading) are going to make future stories difficult to construct. Ironically, the plot's disregard for basic science is worse than that of the people that it's chiding.

After watching this episode I thought it was OK. I couldn't understand all the negative reviews. So I went back and re-watched some David Tennant, Matt Smith and Peter Capaldi episodes. I was literally shocked to see how far the quality of this show has fallen. Something needs to be done about this before it is too late. It's not just the writers but also the actors. They don't seem to understand what they are doing to Doctor Who's legacy. And I was amazed at how much Jodie seems to be trying to mimic the 10th Doctor. I can't think of any other way to fix this problem other than to get rid of Jodie, her companions and Chis Chibnall and try to start over. As an avid fan since 1966 who managed to make it through the hiatus between classic who and new who it really pains me to see what is happening.