Vulcans can be arrogant, but they also have some personality to balance it out. I think part of the problem is we haven’t seen much, other than a sliver of backstory at the end of the episode

I do think the away team section needed another pass, either on the writing or the direction. It had some action moments, but at the same time it didn’t feel like anything the away team actually did carried any impact,and never that they were in any real danger. The only bit that actually felt it had real energy was the archeopteryx getting punched in the face.

I have mixed feelings about this episode.

The A story, with the diplomacy, philosophising about how to encounter and deal with new species, I enjoyed a lot. The ending of the time loop was rather inevitable, it being a time loop set in the past, but it worked. It was a difficult choice and it had to be made. “Pike must suffer” I guess. The translation system leaking information through subtle differences in grammar is a nice idea, it felt a bit underused as a concept though, would have been a good topic for Uhura to explore. This kind of political, philosophical, with a hint of sci-fi, story is exactly what I want from Star Trek. More of this please.

The B story, down on the planet, with the dinosaurs, didn’t grab me. First off, I don’t understand why they couldn’t just fly the shuttle right to the wreck, why did they need to deal with the Rex? Other than getting the drive, this entire section could have been cut and the episode would not have lost anything. I get the feeling the VFX artists had a lot of fun with that section though.

Overall, it was an okay opener. Extra remarks:

• Our new vulcan is a flanderisation of vulcans, and not in a good way. “I am familiar with all earth dialects”. Really? All 7000+ of them? I hope they get their comeuppance at some point soon.
• Pelia’s voice seems much raspier this season. She makes another DW reference. Didn’t work for me, it felt a bit too obvious and in your face. If they’re going to keep making these, something more subtle might have worked, particularly for this episode given DW has had a few dinosaur episodes.
• I am really enjoying the Scotty vs Ortegas game. Looking forward to more of this
• La’An’s business looks interesting, though I hope wherever this goes is distinct from the stuff we’ve already covered with Bashir, Una, and Khan.

If it does leave a big crater, I really hope this doesn’t inspire (persons who shall remain nameless) to start developing rodding tech.

I both love and hate this. At least here we can hand wave it away as “alien computers”

I think Antony Head was pretty good in this one, but I agree not as good as he was in buffy.

I watched SJA as it aired, and from what I remember there wasn’t much if anything that related to this episode. Even K9 wasn’t really in it.

I have mixed feelings about this episode. From a nostalgia bait front, it hits just right. Especially the reveals of SJ and K9. Though again, would have been better without the “next time” spoilers. Anthony Head is absolutely perfect for the role - from the downright evil treatment of the kid in care at the start right down to the tempting offer he gives at the final confrontation. There’s also a lot of humour sprinkled throughout - Teachers living in the school, “I’m the tin dog <sits down in defeat>”. A really nice moment from the doctor as he reveals how he feels about travelling and being around humans.

However, there’s lots that also doesn’t really live up to expectations. After the pretty good werewolf creature last episode, the bat gargoyle creatures look lacking in comparison. The bickering throughout just feels awkward and annoying, whether it’s between Rose / SJ or Mickey. The climactic school lockdown feels over the top, with music too loud and lots of directorial adrenaline without anything much happening. Other than the teachers being eaten, which almost feels played for laughs, it does not feel like there is enough threat. The God maker feels like it comes out of nowhere and I’m still not really sure what it’s about.

There’s so many plot holes and annoyances here it almost seems like cheating to list them off, but I’m going to do some anyway. Why is headmaster recommending visitors try the chips, why have a dramatic K9 sacrifice only to resurrect him minutes later, why does the projector screen explode in the classroom, how has only one journalist spotted whats going on, why does a match-the-symbols puzzle game rewrite the kids brains (that’s all it was, you could play a flash version of this on the bbc website), why does the whole school explode at the end - wish fulfilment for the episode writer maybe?

All that being said, I still enjoyed this episode for the cross-over of characters and the acting from everyone involved. At the end I am glad that SJ got to keep a K9 (of theseus), and in a way I am also glad that mickey finally joins them in a trio.

The bit about them not taking it seriously is a good point. The Doctor spotted pretty quickly that rose was acting oddly in the previous episode. Given how badly the landlord was trying to make it seem like something wasn’t right, Doctor should have spotted it right away.

I agree about the “just let it be a werewolf”. The bit at the close of the episode where they go on about werewolves, the way people react to the monster, it would have been perfectly fine to just let it be a werewolf.

This is one that I haven’t rewatched in a long time. There’s lots of good scottish actors in this one. The plot is good. It’s not one of my go-to standout episodes, it’s not the most exciting, but it holds up okay.

The fantasy story of werewolves is something I could easily see them having done in the recent series. Something that shines through in this episode is some of the DNA of doctor who as an educational vehicle. I didn’t know about her survived Victoria’s assassination attempts or that she had a disease. Some of the comments made me look up when wolves were last seen in britain - about 200 years before victoria. More than enough time for folk stories to evolve about them. We really need to reintroduce them back to our country, there’s far too many deer. They mention a great comet, but I can’t figure out which one it would have been in 1540.

I really like the way Queen Victoria is played here. It would have been easy to go full pomp for a story about royals but its very understated. Which plays well considering she is in mourning. But she is still willing to stand up to the Doctor’s nonsense when he starts babbling. When she starts talking about tales from the beyond, it’s nice to compare this to the Doctor who has also lost his species and is in mourning, who you have to imagine would also be desperate from some kind of message.

I was preparing myself for some ungodly CGI, but actually it’s pretty good. The transformation is creepy, and the actual wolf design looks great, if a bit blurry. The split-screen screen with doctor and wolf listening through the doorway was really nice.

Character-wise it’s nice to see Doctor catching himself being rude, and getting used to his new self. Rose is shown competent, taking charge, which is nice against all the women cowering at the beginning. The women eventually take on some strong action later in the episode. The running “not amused” bit is some nice levity, and continues the kind of humour that Rose had with 9, but it feels a bit more playful or flirty (?) to me when she does it with 10.

Plot annoyances:

• When in human form, the monster has the same desire as the assassins - go after the queen. When in wolf form, it can break out of the cage easily. Why is it even in the cage to begin with?
• How did the wolf get out of the mistletoe library doors that the doctor closed?
• The chase scenes went on possibly a little bit too long for my liking

Fun facts:

• On BBC iPlayer, the sub track for this episode has the continuity announcer’s dialogue on-screen for a fraction of a second when the episode starts.
• Doctor makes a joke about “Balamory”, a Scottish kids TV show which was cancelled just as Doctor Who was being revived. Doctor who is now effectively cancelled, but in this year “Balamory” was revived with new episodes.
• The bad wolf meme rears itself again.

I’ve only watched the first episode, I don’t know if I’ll watch the rest. I think I’ve hit on the key problem that this episode has: Interesting ideas, that it just doesn’t do anything interesting with. There are three key areas the episode could have focused on:

• Translation. You have to be incredibly arrogant to assume you could instantly translate a language you’ve never spoken before. We get some hints of this but they never lead anywhere because the whole scene is cut off by the emergency alert and the cut to the news montage. The mistranslation we briefly see never has a chance to set in with any major down-the-line consequences. Even the reference to misgendering is a throwaway because there was never any danger of it leading to offence, and it comes across virtue signally more than having meaning. And I am very confused why the scene is directed as if this is the first time they’ve shared a dialogue, when there is loads of dialogue, equipment, and prior process to suggest they’ve already done this before.
• Diplomacy. Similar to translation, we never get a chance for any misunderstandings, cultural shocks, subterfuge, political bargaining. We get a generic british diplomat who has to leave before we even get a chance to know him and his mindset. We get some obvious low hanging fruit about pollution, but without any serious discussion. I suspect this may come in later episodes, but this first one fails to make a big impression on this.
• Gerry Anderson rube goldberg machines. The big tank forms a huge set piece. We get a very quick tease of a disaster scene, but it doesn’t lead anywhere. It fails to grip me with drama because there’s a sudden fear things are going to go wrong, only for the problem to immediately resolve without UNIT’s intervention itself when unnamed scaffold worker #3 tightens a bolt and fixes everything. If they wanted to play this up, they failed.

Other gripes:

• It starts with a dodgy CGI jumpscare, the soil liquefaction scene was honestly more terrifying, as something that can actually really happen in certain circumstances like earthquakes, but that only takes place about 10 minutes in. The liquefaction murder would have been a far more terrifying cold open that jumping in to a fishing boat monster. The story is being told from Barclay’s perspective, so I don’t think we should have seen any of the monster until the first time Barclay sees it in person.
• The voices of many of the cast were far to mumbly, I needed subtitles early on. No nonsense army captain has a particularly low monotone voice.
• The reference to the doctor didn’t need to be there, it didn’t contribute to the plot in any way. A spinoff needs to be able to stand on its own two feet. We already have UNIT, Kate, etc as the “hand over” characters, and I didn’t even see the whoniverse logo at the start, so I don’t know what the ultimate goal is there.
• Another admin security failure from UNIT. They keep doing this. They’re supposed to be the toughest top level security force on the planet, and they can’t get a basic HR form right. I can suspend my disbelief for sea monsters and instant translation tech, but ‘I’m here by accident’ is just to much. The hand wavy “ah, but you’re the civilian we need here” doesn’t fix it.
• Various minor writing issues. They “put the body far away from the village”? It’s literally in one of the houses next door. “I’m here by accident”, to which army guy immediately replies “So you’re saying you’re here by accident”. Why the deck chairs just to watch a loudspeaker blast some sound waves? Why is a helicopter carrying steel beams across london?

I really enjoyed this one. A nice tight mostly self contained sci-fi story, set in Lagos, but with some nice ties in to the wider plot.

Random aside, this isn’t the first time I’ve come across Lagos in a multi-dimensional sci fi story. M.R. Carey’s Pandominion series uses the locale to good effect. In a perfect world that shouldn’t really stand out but having been through enough London/New York focused stories from so many franchises it’s nice to see somewhere new take the role of global crossroads for interesting stories.

The idea of an engine powered by stories is a great sci fi concept. I did feel some of the elements were a tad in my face - the heart of the engine is a… heart? ok, ;). Imagery aside, one of the last lines is just wanting credit for your work, and that’s very timely given the current space of the creative landscape being very unforgiving for artists. Stories are a massive part of our culture, and sharing them, adapting them, remixing them to our needs, and then resharing them with yet more people is vitally important.

The inclusion of Martin’s doctor was totally unexpected, and I hope that eventually leads somewhere. I can see a lot of potential there. Exploring the full story with Anansi would be great.

Mrs Flood relies on the NHS for her meds. Something to rile up the “Doctor Who’s gone too woke” haters - An interdimensional immigrant using our healthcare (and I’ll bet Mrs Flood doesn’t even pay taxes)!

Adjusted to the initial sale value of the car - Less easy to cheat by not declaring income, and bigger cars (likely more expensive) that take up more space, pay more.

This episode contains a very powerful and pointed message, but as the episode reveals at the end, it will be lost on those who need to hear it most. Some people are too far gone and will refute the obvious, even when they on some level know it is true, and I struggle to fit myself into their mindset to understand that. Clearly a stab at conspiracy peddlers, toxic masculinity influencers, the press and politicians that use scapegoats, and all the others that prey on insecure people’s worries and fear. They probably don’t watch DW and wouldn’t understand the point made here if they did, one can only hope this helps to immunise any kids watching against falling into these traps as they grow up.

Now, my thoughts on the plot here are not super positive.

First, Kate, what the hell? If Ruby needs to talk to someone, Kate needs to as well. The head of a global security org can’t behave like that, even if it is part of some calculated effort to undo the damage done by a conspiracy peddler. The public reaction to “the person we think is making stuff up to control us and out us in harms way is actually willing to put us all in harms way and she’s vindictive as hell, she just let that guy get his arm mauled off” being livestreamed should have gone the other way and made the whole situation and public attitudes to UNIT worse. At one point she says to tap the CCTV feeds into his livestream - if I understood that correctly, that means they could have just shut his feed down remotely from the beginning, and avoided this whole mess, if they’d just been a bit more proactive. Which brings me to my next grumble…

I really don’t like the writing trope of “here’s a super powerful group that exists to protect the world, only they have terrible OpSec so it’s easy for people to infiltrate them”. No-one, even the analysts (or was he a receptionist? I’m unclear what his job was) at UNIT would have access to all their staff’s names and addresses, and any looking into that would necessarily have to be done with more than one person, just to be sure there was no ill intent. They certainly shouldn’t be bale to remotely control the building’s door locks. And if UNIT can screen out applicants like Conrad for being untrustworthy, how did they let someone who’s into conspiracy sites in to begin with?

Now, positives:

I really enjoyed Gatwa’s performance here. He was hardly in this episode, but that bit at the end really shows his range. He can go from happy and carefree to deadly serious in an instant.

Our monster of the week, the shreek, is an interesting idea. The exist out of our dimension and can pop in to attack those they’ve previously marked. I’m kind of getting Predator vibes from it’s behaviour and looks. It does sort of beg the question why they wouldn’t just attack and kill their victims right away. Waiting a year to juice up the taste of fear hormones can’t have that much pay off, unless they live in a timestream that means they’re not actually waiting that long.

I enjoyed seeing ruby again, following along Doctor’s prior companions after they’ve left the Tardis is always nice. Seeing her breakdown and admit the need for help is refreshing, and honestly that should be more commonplace. I’m glad to see Ruby’s family is staying strong, they can be there to support her. Though I suspect they might be even more dangerous to Conrad than Kate was if they ever got close to him.

Assorted notes:

• The prison below(?) the building reminds me of Torchwood a bit, they had one of those if I’m remembering right.
• Mrs Flood is a prison governess. A woman of many talents. I wonder if she dodges tax with all her paychecks.
• If the Doctor can land on planet earth, why couldn’t he just find a spot and sort of “fast-forward” with the brakes on for a few years until 2025… I’m sure there’s a timey wimey reason why that wouldn’t work.
• It’s been a long time since we’ve seen Trinity Wells presenting the news (I had to look that name up)
• UNIT using a cargo heli to move a dangerous alien that can disrupt electronics across London via the sky? No. Just… no. That’s screaming “what could go wrong” :)

Absolutely. Screenshots of 3d desktop cube on ubuntu more than a decade ago is what taught me linux existed. It’s an absolutely terrible and inefficient way to run desktop workspaces, but it hooked me all the same.

Users need to know what this dot means, and some like children or the elderly will likely not understand the ramifications

A true “Thanks Obama” for modern times

I really enjoyed that. Going into it blind, it was very fun to watch. Not quite as good as Midnight, but then sequels rarely are. But I think it was a good choice to revisit it - if the humans have vanished, then the doctor wouldn’t have been able to go to midnight and play a part in defeating the monster first time around, so it would still be there. The final ending scene was a bit cliched though, the episode would have been better to just end with the Tardis dematerialising.

The inclusion of a deaf character was done well, and the use of live subtitlers is a really great “future gadget” to invent and then explore in a sci-fi context, from how it can offer help, and how it can be used to exclude people easily.

The idea that civil servants that interact with the public must know a sign language makes sense to me - it might indicate that something about the Lombardy population has a high population of deaf people. Maybe a side effect of the war. That would also explain why they were all equipped with subtitlers available as a backup for everyone else. SLs are not universal though, so I guess the translation matrix can help “translate” gestures as appropriate to the local context just as it does text and speech (and BSL to us watching). A side effect of this is it would have been illegible to any American signers watching.

Exploring the wider plot about how humanity is gone makes me think we’re facing a planet out of time situation, as we saw in season 4 (another callback?). Though if the lombardy are that similar to humans, they must be related in some way. I guess whatever that link is would have to come pre-2025, because we’re not out in space yet, and we won’t have any time to do so afterwards.

I really enjoyed this episode, this season is going very well.

Loved it.

First off, the premise is great. It’s a trope that’s been done quite a lot now (childhood toy/show/experience gone wrong), but it still works well. Great animation and voice acting on the cartoon characters, including the Doctor and the Nurse when they as they went from 2D out to 4th wall-busting characters.

A thought occurred to me while watching - right now the BBC is partnered with Disney. If they had partnered with HBO instead like they have on other dramas… we would have had an episode full of bugs bunny and “What’s up doc”, a la Space Jam. I’m not sure if that would have been better or worse. :)

Breaking the 4th wall and going meta can be difficult, but I think it paid off. The “real” fans poking fun at the show’s nonsense was self aware which helps. All the fans saying “Blink”, an episode the Doctor was hardly even in, was hilarious.

I am glad they did keep follow on with Belinda really wanting to go home and not mess around in an abandoned building for at least one more episode.

I still have no clue what’s going on with the larger plot about Mrs Flood.

The time loop has left me confused. I’m not entirely sure what happened there. I guess this is one of those paradoxy things that doesn’t have a beginning, but that whole plot point was quite unsatisfying.

Poking fun at those fake “buy a plot of land on the moon”, “name a star after you” deeds is great. I never understood them.

AI/AL generator just seemed a wee bit too on the nose for “things in the zeitgeist right now”, but the reveal did get a chuckle out of me. Definite cyberman vibes here, and at one point he/it used the word “conversion”, I wonder if some draft had cybermen in it or if that’s just doctor who script language leaking through. I like the design of the armed robots: they look a bit childish and gamey like giant toys, but it fits thematically if ultimately they were designed by an incel manboy.

Interesting idea behind the brain-computer interface being buggy - computers think in powers of 2, 8 is a common grouping, and it’s easy to make an off-by-one bug. If someone has managed to grab a subtitle track, it would be great to scan through and check every ninth word for the whole episode, and see if there are more hidden messages. I love when shows do that.

A minor logic issue around the names used - We’re not called sunkind, nor do we live on planet human, so I’m not sure why everything was missbelindachandra-xyz, but logic aside it was amusing. Also, I guess Sasha 55 was a clone? That’s usually what name-number means in sci-fi, but we never got a real explanation of that. For the rest of the season if they decide to just keep going by “the Nurse” and “the Doctor”, I would love that.

Given what’s been in the news lately about companies like 23andme, and the privacy associated with DNA, when the doctor scanned her, my first reaction was “oh, that’s a bit weird, does he really just DNA-scan everyone he comes across?”, so for her to immediately call him out on it was fantastic.

I like that the Nurse’s character is wary of men, given her previous bad relationship, and it’s good to have a character willing to call the Doctor on his BS. Even acting with the best of intentions, a man in a position of power over a woman can’t be doing things that make her feel uncomfortable, like basically kidnapping her. I really hope that in the next episode she keeps this up and doesn’t immediately forgive and forget.

On disintegrating that poor cat: Don’t hurt the cat. I hate it when animals get hurt even in fiction. Wreck the humans and bots all you want, fine, but not the poor animals. I am annoyed that there wasn’t some sort of timey wimey explanation that fixes it and brings it back to life, it just gets played off for laughs with a “went to live on a farm”.

Some issues, but a pretty good opener. 7/10

OK, but all the ticks can go die in a fire