Can You Hear Me?

While the bad guys were great, unfortunately they were the second act of the episode.

We once again saw a preachy episode this time about mental health.

It had very good moments, when the doctor talked about what mankind was, that almost gave me chills.

But most of the episode was a bore. Half the episode was spend on the personal lives of the companions.

A shame, the setup of this episode was really promising. If they had put more focus on making a good story, rather than preaching, this could have been an 8 or even a 9.

But with this execution, I cannot give it any higher than a 4.

The issue of the week and this monster of the week are very important and an interesting concept. But again for me personally falls so very short on the delivery. This frustrates me more than any other episode these past two seasons as I can identify particularly. I could see the clumsy delivery as a reflection of the issue which historically has been hard to talk about. If it weren't for that fact that we have seen this trait too often of late. Just comes down to the writing style again. Which is not at all engaging, disjointed and clunky. The character interactions are at times devoid of chemistry. I'd say 80% of that is script. But at times it is the a few actors who do not meet the historical standard I expect from the show. The imaginative narrative unimaginatively delivered is a constant complaint I've had. This episode felt like a room full of different people drafted their individual parts of the script and it was stitched together to produce something absent of any identifiable rhythm.

One praise. Finally I had a moment where I began to feel more drawn to Yaz's character. Shame it was in this episode which I don't imagine I will ever watch again with the exception of a Whovian reaction.

Graham talking about his fear of cancer and the doctor as a healer is just responding awkwardly.

In these moments the real character of a person is shown and if this is the character of this doctor it's Just a horrible doctor.

The writing of this new incarnation is underwhelming and makes me think that Chris Chapnell never understood what the Doctor stands for.

Based on the trailers, this was the episode I was probably least enthusiastic about, but it turned out to be much better than I expected, unlike Praxeus, which looked great in trailers.

I think this would have benefited from a longer running time, there were some awesome concepts, and some truly great visuals, with more time to develop this would have worked much better.

Stunning visuals, this episode looked fabulous, how much of the budget was used here, this truly was impressive to look at. I liked that we had an introduction to the story before the opening credits. An excellent villain, and secondary villain. I found myself reminded somewhat of Amy's Choice, with the Dream Lord, and Enlightenment, but that's no bad thing.

I loathe the TARDIS interior, I would expect travelling through time and space with those lights they'd all have headaches, the interior they introduced for the new Doctor in the Judoon episode was amazing, this one really is a mess.

The Doctor's reaction to Graham's cancer was poorly judged, The Doctor has ways been awkward, but always cared about humanity, and companions, this scene was badly written.

A visual feast, with a very good menace. Thought this was rather good. 8/10

A recurring theme with this series is the episode's tendency to start with a certain degree of interest before it completely derails because it spirals into a pool of not knowing what is going on.

This episode continued this disastrous trend for the show. It appears to me that the writers combine several episodes into one, because the standalone episodes are somehow even worse than what gets produced, and when they do produce what gets recklessly thrown into the pot, it's a complete shambles.

Can you hear me? had good concepts with poor execution. The flow of the episode was nonsensical, from going to a ship of prisoners in one scene, then finding out one second later that they've randomly decided to take over the planet. It's painful to watch (and even more painful to write about) because it's immensely confusing and aimless at the same time. The fact Jodie is being used to describe the plot, rather than having it being told through what's shown on screen, is definitive of this episode being the worst assembled of the season.