All New Who

next episode is the India/Pakistan one with Yaz meeting her grandmother, or great grandmother (so they have to give Yaz some sort of personality for this one surely!), and the episode after that is set around the time of King James VI, and witch trials, so expect to see innocent women, Doctor included be threatened with a hot poker and a fiery demise amidst a misogynistic society of Kings and Bishops!

Whilst by no means a flawless episode, and I will get to the flaws, I am going to start with the good, because this weeks episode features- taa-daah- an actual plot! With secondary characters who serve a purpose and a function in that plot, whilst being well drawn and realised.  (How did Chibbers read this episode and not think, 'maybe those first 5 of mine need another look').


Anyhow the plot, of which as I mentioned, there actually is one- Yaz wants to go back and see her Nan, Umbrine, on her wedding day, her Nan has informed us that she was the first Muslim woman married in Pakistan, and she has given out, on her birthday, presents to her granddaughters, including Yaz who gets an old 40's style vbroken wrist watch- the story of which Umbrine is reluctant to tell.

Initially not keen on the idea, the Doctor doesn't want to give into Yaz desire to visit her own families past, but the companions convince her to go for an hour, and so they do.

Taking them to India on the eve of Partition with Pakistan, and the rising tensions.

But not, as expected upon  a city as Yaz's gran had said, but on a rural farm, here her Nan his about to get married to someone who is not Yaz' grandfather, a man called Prem.

Meanwhile psychic powerful aliens are popping about in the woods, and apparently have killed a Holy Man who was coming to officiate at the wedding.

In terms of characters alongside the usual crew and Umbrine, we have the mother of the bride, the groom Prem and his brother, Manish. They are Indian, and Hindi, Umbrine is Muslim. And on the eve of their wedding, partition happens.

And the conflict between brothers arises, whilst Prem was away fighting for the British, Manish has been radicalised by pamphlets and radio broadcasts and is firmly in the India for Hindus cam, Muslims in Pakistan, and therefore strongly disapproves of his brothers upcoming marriage.

The appearance of the seeming demons and the death of the Holy Man further convinces the mother of the bride that the Indians family is cursed, and so is the wedding.
But Umbrne is determined to go ahead with it and so is Prem.

And that's your set up- aliens in the wrong place at the wrong time seemingly killing folk, and a Umbrine marrying someone who isn't Yaz's grandfather, in seemingly the wrong place- so either she lied about her marriage, she kept this marriage a secret, or it shouldn't be happening at all.

And that is you set up. Which brings me onto setting.

The big fear going into this base on Chibnalls writing so far was that it could be horribly pc- a lot of white colonialism is bad isn't it, and simplified twirly moustached villain Englishmen.
What makes this work is they went the opposite route here, this is a story about partition told solely from the perspective of a couple of small farm landowners, neighbours for generations despite being muslim and hindu, who have helped each others families for generations, and whose entire existence and lives has just been altered forever by a distant, tinny voice on a radio in a big empty barn in the middle of nowhere.
It is far more powerful  way to show the effect of these distant decisions than to show us the makers of the decisions as simplified figures.

And whilst he device of the brothers having opposing views is hardly new it is played out well, doing enough to humanise the ideals and opposing views that were about to lead to the deaths of so many and the mass forced movement of a people as well as showing a sympathetic view of radicalisation in that Manish fought himself when very young still in the war and killed. His views that India should now be for muslims only, and Hindus can have pakistan, and that way they can both feel safe has an internal logic to it with his character that provide a motivation that is both informative in its historical setting, and effective as an emotional story telling device. Its also something every other episode so far has been lacking in any protagonist, a well realised motivation played out over the entire course of an episode.

The final third, Manish calls in the muslim only militia, and Prem gets killed after a failure to reconcile moment with his brother as TARDIS Team turn and walk away to the sound of the gunshot that kills Prem, and the aliens witness and preserve his memory are very powerful finale, not shying away form the horrors that are only just beginning in these first acts of brutality, but also from the natural ending of the story.
Umrine gets away with the women, Prem having given them the time to escape, and Umbrine goes on to remarry and live the life Yaz knows, moving to Sheffield, England to flee the troubles.

We do get a final scene between Yaz and Nan and it felt a little odd to me. In the opening scene I felt when Nan had said Yaz was her favourite, it would come back up why, that she remembered her from the wedding, given she not only looks exactly the same, she is dressed in those exact clothes. Yet it doesn't. It made the final scene between them seem strangely pointless for me.

There are also some very good performances in this one, Grahame is the stand out again, bringing a degree of emotionality to his performance that gives a real weight (this does unfortunately underline that its something Jodie has yet to display, even if this is her best outing yet)

Ryan I like when he is written this way, he is kind of a loyal, happy dog, just pleased to be with the Doctor on the adventure, and pretty much up for it, also ready to go for a walk as it were.

Yaz, she is still a bit of canvas waiting to be filled, but we do get a bit of colour in her now at least. She is the pivot around which the plot revolves and gets some good scenes at the start and, incredibly after six episodes, her first scene with just Graham, and its a good one, bar a bit of stumbling dialogue in the middle.
And she gets a conflict, though because of how the plot goes it doesn't go to far, but her nan is seemingly marrying another man than she told her family of, and to begin with she is reluctant for this wedding to go ahead at all, thinking it might be wrong. But she does fade out a bit again toward the latter half as the focus switches more to the Doctor. And six episodes in, even after this one, I would still struggle to list Yaz's character traits and personality.

And the Doctor, well this is the best writing of a Doctor we have had this series by a country mile, not flawless, not quite there for me yet, but its strides along the road compared to what she has been given before whilst falling short of what she needs (Ill come to that later).

As the Doctor she pretty much does everything that is Doctory, she takes charge in situations without seeming to try, she comes with sciencey solutions to problems and she investigates and interrogates. She officiates at the wedding, she makes some actually humorous comments this week that seem like 13th Doctor comments, not borrowed 10th and 11th Doctor lines. And for the most part the few references to her being female not male are handled well and nicely nod backwards in a way that feels more connecting to previous Doctors than the lack of connections to previous we have had so far this series, or as gender commentary.
And she gets to make a big Doctor speech at the wedding about the power of love basically in the face of unseemingly bad odds.

But of all of it its the speech that I felt was not as strong as it should be in terms of its delivery. It wasn't bad and quite possibly given she is following one of the best speech giving Doctors in the shows history it was always going to be hard to follow up in the big speech department, but it felt somehow slightly lacking for me, like she was trying a little to hard, I'm not sure, but it didn't quite hit for me the note I felt the writing was reaching for.

Another problem is that when 9, 10, 11, or 12 gave a speech about love, or kindness, it was not all they did. 13 has been nice, kind, giving us warnings about knives, guns, the rights of living things in every episode, and without a good villain to test her moral compass nothing but keen and nice- so it feels more of the same, there is nothing so far to contrast it against in her character, its just more 13 being nice again. Which I think takes away from its effect.

In the good section the cinematography has to go, and thankfully for once the direction and editing, both of which fully support the scenes and emotions well. This was quite frankly, despite the expensive new look of the show, in terms of direction, the first time I felt I wasn't watching something shot by someone who normally directs causality or the Bill.
Also the score, which uses sounds native to the area, its a little overblown in the first few scenes in India, but it soon settles into creating a very suitable atmosphere and ambience. Easily my favourite soundtrack to an episode this series.


So its got a plot, characters setting, well shot and edited, so why is not quite a classic?

Well I suspect the answer lies in 2 things- Chibbers, and it should have been 2 parts. And they are probably connected.

There are some stand out moments of crabbit inducing groan and they are all the same- the opening scene at Nans birthday, the post death who the hell was he over the Holy Mans death, the alien assassins reveal of what they are up to scene.
And what makes them the same is they are all hasty exposition info dumps.

The first one gets a partial pass, as while it does just have Nan dump a bunch of her past  in a slightly awkward forced manner (not the performance the writing) it is only partly true and serves a plot of function of setting up a mystery for Yaz to be intrigued by. But its still an exposition dump when you come in cold, and certainly made me fear the worst.
The Holy Man I feel they should have encountered first in the woods before the cart, giving us time to get to know him, who he is, why he is there, before he dies, rather than all that information coming in yet another info dump, after he is dead.
And the aliens, well they basically reveal not only that they arent bad guys at all, but witnesses to those who die alone, and didn't kill anyone, Manish did to stop the wedding and because the holy man was going to sully himself by marrying a hindu and muslim in Manish's eyes.
And they also reveal Prem will die on his wedding day, they cant do anything about it, that's just when he dies, but they will witness his death and preserve his memory in their huge shrine/computer thingy. And they explain why they do this by basically giving you a history of their entire bloody civilisation.
That's a lot to reveal in one massive exposition dump with nothing but some holographic displays for accompaniment.

And what all these scenes seem to have in common to me is the hand of exposition happy Chibbers, turning a story that was too long for his 1 part only philosophy to fit, into 1 episode by simply cutting stuff out and putting it all into exposition instead to save time.
And the other thing all these scenes have in common is they are stand out the worst scenes in the episode.

But the rest is good, at times very good. I would even go as far as to say as a historical based episode it is one of the best in NuWHO.

But I obviously cant finish on a non-crabbit note- so some problems from biggest to smallest-

if all the aliens were going to do was explain they were basically passive and doing a nice thing, why all the shenanigans, as soon as the Doctor soniced them for a reading at the start they must known she was a time traveller- if all they were going to do upon meeting her face to face was explain themselves, why not do that immediately? Or when they found them witnessing the Holy Mans death? There isn't really a reason why not.

With the aliens being basically not the villains, the demons being what people can do, ordinary people when they become a mob, it again leaves the Doctor without a villain to be tested against- she really needs a meaty, complex opponent with depth of character, motivations and a sense of real threat. Someone to get personal with. Six episodes in this still hasn't happened yet and she is not being clearly defined in adversity as she should, and as all her predecessors had been by this point going back to the very first, who met the daleks in is second story.

When the Doctor is explaining how the TARDIS can extrapolate a date and time from the watch- that's all we need to know- do not give us 2 minutes of techno babble trying to explain in some scientific sounding way how the TARDIS does things- this is not ST, its a magic fucking box- we all know that. Its science beyond human comprehension, we dont need to know how it does stuff, just that it does stuff. Do whatever one else does- say something like' if i take this watch and just plug it into the TARDIS telepathic circuits, we'll see what happens!" and get on with the story!
From the start the TARDIS was always downplayed, thats why in over 50 years we've barely seen anything of all the other rooms in her and rumoured things, it keeps it a mystery, saves in budget, and more importantly keeps her function in the story in place- a magic box to get the characters to where the next adventure begins. The TARDIS works on plot convenience, always has, thats her purpose in the story- leave it at that dont waste time on technobabble about her.

The Doctor saying when getting the wedding tattoos that it never happened before when she was a man- given al the tribes, human and alien the doctor has spent time with, all the weddings and ceremonies he has attended throughout time and space I find that rather unlikely! And in fact I am pretty sure I can remember at least the 4th Doctor with some tribal style painting on him.


 A turn around in writing quality with Chibbers out the way, marred only by a few plot gripes, awkward dialogue delivery in a couple scenes, and the suspiciously Chibbers like exposition scenes creeping in to mar proceedings- and Graham still giving me more emotional chills in his performance than 13 in her speech. And still no villain for 13 to be tested against.

And I felt the background was well integrated into the plot for the most part in a fairly natural way, it was about greater events overwhelming them. I thought the British got fair blame for essentially cutting and running, and this was nicely emphasised by the British only being present as a distant voice on a radio slicing up the country. It gave that sense of a retreating British power leaving chaos in its wake. And it didn't shy from the fact that the carnage that followed was not British against anyone, it was Muslim against Hindu. And again using the brothers and the marriage across religious divides, whilst hardly new, to humanise the conflict is well realised and written.

The fact it has a plot and characters that effect it and are part of it is a step up in its own right. But like Rosa I feel when the aliens in the piece are as insignificant as they are in the end here and in Rosa, they would be better going the whole hog and having a pure, non-alien, monster of the week, historical in the fashion of the early 1st Doctor ones. In both this and Rosa they dont really add much to proceedings and kind of feel shoved in there just to have an alien presence and the time saved by removing them could be better used.
If all you've time for is either a one note motivated villain like he is racist, or an alien that requires an entire scene of nothing but exposition to explain their presence, plan, motivation and reason in one big dump, then maybe dont bother with them is a better solution