All New Who

Petty Tyrant wrote:{{ You Halfy will get to watch on Disney+ at the perfectly reasonable time of 7pm. We, the home audience however get it dumped at same time as US now, meaning it's 7pm there and midnight here.}}

Why would they feel the need to do that? It's not like the American audience is clamoring for spoiler-free Who.

I rather liked the companion in the clip Petty posted.  It was a clear case of going for personality rather than sexpot.  Very watchable.

{{ Why they did it is one of the great arguments in Who at the moment. Whilst its a simultaneous broadcast, so no spoilers for those who watch at midnight, but arguably the main audience for Who, kids, they have to wait all of Saturday till the normal broadcast time in the UK for Who and they will have to avoid spoilers all day long. It's just wrong. Especially as Who is a British institution- it'd be like I don't know some huge long-running US show like ST or something announcing a major new series, then debuting it broadcasting in Europe at a reasonable time and shoving it on in the US at midnight. It just would never happen.

The companion with 12 (Capaldi)? That's Bill. I really enjoyed that TARDIS team, The Doctor, Bill, Nardole and on and off Missy.}}

{{ Talking Bill, there's a fav scene of mine from that episode, Bills first trip into the past, it follows on from her just witnessing the death of a child-



- and yes the Doctor did steal the pies, from a guys shop earlier in the episode (well he stole the TARDIS afterall) }}

{{ Episode titles and directors for the new series. All I can say is RTD's writing better be a hell of a lot better than in the specials because he's written all but two episodes of the series. The last time a showrunner tried to write the majority it was Chibnall....}}

ep1- Space Babies- RTD. Julie-Anne Robinson director
ep2- The Devils Chord- RTD. Ben Chessel director
ep3- Boom- Moffat. Julie-Anne Robinson director
ep4- 73 Yards- RTD. Dylan Holmes Williams director
ep5- Dot and Bubble- RTD. Dylan Holmes Williams director
ep6- Rogue- Kate Heron and Bryony Redmond. Ben Chessel director
ep7- The Legend of Ruby Sunday- RTD. Jamie Donahue director
ep8- Empire of Death- RTD. Jamie Donahue director

{{ Good little interview with Ncuti}}

{{{ Well I watched the first episode in the new series of Who. And um, yeah. They dropped two eps at once but I don't think I'm mentally strong enough for another one yet because the first one was terrible.

Ok, the good, Ncuti is fine and Millie is, adequate, in the roles of Doctor and companion, but most of what they say and do and the terrible plot they find themselves in means it doesn't really matter much.
So what is this terrible plot?- well the first part of it is a sort of crash course of what everything in Who is by way of an exposition dump, ostensibly to the new companion but blatantly to the new Disney audience, the TARDIS, why its policebox, the sonic (which for some reason is still looks like a tv remote shagged a computer mouse), what happened to Gallifrey.

And as if this didn't feel tired enough this opening section is oddly full of stuff the show has done better before. So we get the last of the time lords spiel- oh how RTD seems happy to have that back after Moffat quite rightly moved the character on from it, but no here we are back again (and did RTD unwrite Moffat era? He has the Doctor say he's 1000 years old but he was 2000 when he was 12? 1000 would make sense following Tennant as 10, but 11 did that growing through is 900's and on into old age on Trenzalore at close to 2000), then there are scenes RTD himself wrote that he wrote much better first time round- the phone scene for example, its a rehash of the same scene in Rose's second episode when the Doctor lets her call home from the future. Only in the Rose story she had just suffered massive culture shock and then had a barny with the Doctor over him refusing to tell her who he is or where he is from, and its in the aftermath of them making up for that that we have this moment, where the Doctor lets Rose touch base and home. In this episode he just does it, she calls home for a laugh and that's it, end of. It's the same scene, but shorn of all its surrounding thematic material that made the original a good scene, it wasn't the joke about being able to phone home or the bill that made it a good scene, it was the emotion catharsis. Here there is none of that and it all feels like that, there's a bit where the Doctor tells a baby (we'll get to them shortly) that being scared is a superpower, its a weird crib of 12's fear is a superpower speech, only badly done and sort of dumped in there whereas in its original situation in Listen it fully fitted into the scene, the incident going on in that very scene and the overall narrative about the Doctor's childhood fear being part of what drives him and makes him who he is. Again, in this its just sort of there. You could call these, and the several more throughout nods back, but they are more like random Who scenes pulled out a hat and shoved in round the edges of the plot.

And oh the plot, so they turn up on a space station after a pointless scene stepping on a butterfly in a period butterflies didn't yet exist, a scene whose only point as far as I can tell is a 'joke' about the TARDIS having a 'butterfly paradox cancellation' switch, and the station is falling apart. The only folk onboard are babies, talking babies, in electric prams, and a Nanny that seems like a computer but is actually a staff member who secretly stayed on aboard after the company who grew the babies for colony worlds closed down the station, but apparently its illegal to turn off the baby making, but there is no legal obligation to look after them, or provide them enough food or air to live for that long. This complete contradiction in the planets laws regarding the babies- you cant kill them in the 'womb' as it were, but you can once they are born, is I think, some sort of clumsy as hell comment on abortion, and in particular the debate in the US, a nation who bans abortion on moral grounds but not leaving the unwanted children to die. The whole thing is then hand waved away with “its a crazy world down there”.
And of course there is a monster, a literal Bogeyman, a monster made from baby bogeys.
This plot is so stupid I cant even recount it without feeling stupid writing it down.
Anyhow there's a terrible scene with a baby confronting the monster to be brave, but of course being absolutely fine by hiding in a vent, and eventually nanny tries to blow it out an airlock alien style, but the Doctor saves it because just like him its unique, and special in the universe and everyone has a right to be unique and special and to be who they are. Oh did I mention that twice? So does the episode, at least, he gives the same speech to the baby who thinks they are wrong as they have not grown up and are still babies.

You can see why I am struggling to go on with a second episode. This is garbage, utter garbage masquerading as Who. I'll hang in there this series until the Moffat penned one in the hopes I might at least see one half decent episode with Ncuti, he has potential, but not in these appalling stories. }}

{{ well Im up to ep 3 of this new era, the first two I did not like at all, did not feel like Who to me, the Doctor did not feel like the Doctor to me.
But in steps Moffat with an episode set entirely in one quarry and the Doctor stood on one spot for 50 minutes atop a landmine, and it's still by far the best of this new era.
Ncuti gets to be the Doctor for once, and he is good in the role switching effortlessly between fear, tension and unbounded joy (and wa sit just e or did a combinatin of Moffat's writing and Moffat being on set meant Ncuti was the most Scottish he has been in the role to date).
Millie gets to actually do something as Ruby other than be an orphan and ask questions, here she comes up with plans, she is brave and daring, all the stuff she has been missing since the start.Its not an instant classic as many of Moffats Who tends to be, not for me at least, but its a very solid 8 out of 10 sor tof epiisode, elevated to feeling like a 10 out of 10 only in comparison to the first two episodes and their overtly campy, queer messaging and plots without coherence.
Not that this episode lacks social commentary - there is commentary on the arms trade, AI, capitalism, the NHS, and with the return of Moffats Anglican Fighting Marines of the future, critique of faith. It's all there, its just in service to the plot rather than the other way round as has been the case to date with RTD.
Welcome back Moff- your timing could not have been better the show was really needing you! }}

We watched the first two episodes... I am at a loss of words... Not a fan.

I thought the genoside was a ref to Chibby Who. Mainly because I didn't know what he was talking about, and I can't actually remember what happened to the time lords since it was all such a huge mess.

{{ I'd give ep3 a go Amarie, it's got a similar feel to 12th Doctor era stories I would say. And it's worth seeing Ncuti actually get a chance to play a recognisable version of the Doctor. Its not his best but its miles better than those first two episodes were. And there is some hope for net weeks even though it's back to RTD in that it looks like a gothic folk tale set in Wales, which is a good setting for such a tale and hopefully will continue the more serious and darker tone of Moffat's episode.}}

From what little I've seen I've gotten the following impression.

When you put previous doctors in rocky situations, they respond either by applying extreme focus to deal with it, tossing it off as routine, or tossing it off as fun. (I'm not counting Jodie of course, whose chosen reaction is to look gormless).

Ncuti seems to be having fun but he comes across as showing off that he thinks it's fun. Rubs me the wrong way. The Doctor is not Peter Pan.

{{ Moffats ep is the first one I've recognised Ncuti as the Doctor, I don't think there is a modern writer of Who that has as good and intuitive grasp on who the Doctor is as Moffat. He gives Ncuti a chance to show what sort of Doctor he can be by sticking him standing on a landmine for 50 minutes and just continuously ratcheting up the pressure.}}

can't say I understood what was going on but that's a better version than the Peter Pan we've been seeing.

We were all Who'ed out for tonight, so ep. 3 will have to wait.
Moffat+RTD is the dream team, so I'm feeling mildly optimistic.

I really hope this is just easing new people into the new who, and we get some better stuff later on.

{{ Tonight's episode 73 yards and last weeks Boom are two very good episodes of Who, and this is one is all about mystery, but for me the bigger mystery what the hell were the 60th anniversary, the xmas ep and the first two eps of this series about when you can produce Who like this? Its very hard to comprehend that the man that wrote all those RTD, also wrote this. It certainly shows how broad he can write, I'll give him that, but the shift in quality o writing is what is strangest. As is why they thought Space Babies and The Devils Chord were a good way to open when they could have opened with much better.

Anyhow the episode itself. It very much appeals to me in no small part because I have a duel love for folklore and myths and late 1800's horror of the sort M.R. James wrote through to Lovecraft. And the thing about those writers is their horror does not often come with an explanation, they are more this very strange/weird/frightening thing happened, here it is what do YOU make of it? And this episode falls in to that category.
RTD's decision to bring the forces beyond our universe into Who in the form of supernatural rather than scifi occurrences has not at all worked for me, not in the specials when it was conceived not in Devils Chord where a potentially interesting idea was ruined by being presented like a bad pantomime, but this works, this is how to do supernatural in Who, it still feels like it fits Who, where the others felt nothing like Who.

So the premise. The Doctor and Ruby rock up on the coast of Wales, the Doctor is telling her about a terrible Welsh Prime Minister who in 2046 took the world to the brink of nuclear war, before realising she is from before that time and decides best not to tell her. At which point he breaks the threads of a faery ring, laid out on the ground, made up of mementos, trinkets, good-luck charms and written notes. The Doctor apologies for breaking the ring and Ruby takes some of the notes to read, which say 'rest in peace' and one about someone called Mad Jack, but when she turns to the Doctor he is gone.

Now Doctor light episodes are not unknown, they let the actor get time off during the busy shooting schedule, but normally they are done in such a fashion the actor playing the Doctor can still shoot a days worth of stuff on a single set, and its interspersed cunningly into the plot so you often don't even notice it is a Doctor lite, think Flatline where Capaldi is confined to the shrunken TARDIS and shot all his stuff in one afternoon, but the way its woven into the plot he seems to be in it throughout. Or Blink which has Tennant consistently cropping up on the screen and talking via the DVD.
But this is the most Doctor lite episode, this is literally the last we will see of the Doctor until the last few minutes of the episode. This a pure Ruby episode.

Ruby then notices an old woman, who is making odd gestures some distance from her, and every time Ruby moves so does she, we never see her move, but she is always there, in the background silently gesturing. And everyone Ruby asks to approach the woman and talk to her simply run away moments later in sheer terror.

And that's the basic premise from here on in, we follow Ruby through her life, and always this old woman is there, everyone up to including her own foster mother and Kate Stewart and UNIT, when they talk to her run, and refuse to have anything to do with Ruby ever again, as if horrified, disgusted and terrified of her all at the same time. And so she goes throug her life alone, save her strange companion.

During this time however a new politician rises to power in the UK, a Welshman by the nickname Mad Jack, the very PM the Doctor had warned her about, they are a Union Jack flying nationalistic government, which Ruby joins as a volunteer to infiltrate, and it quickly becomes clear Mad Jack wants to fire nukes at people.

Ruby means of preventing him I am actually not going to spoil, nor the ending of who the women is, save to say the answer it does provides only explains a small part of what happened. It does not explain the reaction of everyone who spoke to her however, and in particular not the reaction of her foster mother whose words, “But you're not my daughter are you? Even your own birth mother didn't want you” are not explained by the revelation of who the old woman that has followed Ruby throughout her life and into eventual old age was. Nor does it explain why the Doctor vanished, or how Ruby got back to the clifftop at that time when old, though a few options are presented as possibilities if you think them through (I favour a sort of penitence, they committed a sin when they accidently broke the faery ring, and Ruby got a chance to redeem them by her actions stopping evil politician, and as a reward she got the chance to set things right- no idea what she says to folk to make them horrified and run though, but I think thats meant to be a mystery).
It's presumably all tied somehow to what will be the series revelation of what was set up in Church on Ruby Road, who Ruby really is and why she sometimes makes it snow, even indoors at intense emotional movements.
But as far as this episode and story taken on its own goes it is merely an unexplained component in the  MD James, 'what do you make of these strange events' narrative style RTD has written this in.

Its main strength is its atmosphere and sustained mystery, the initial use of Wales and playing with the tropes of the isolated rural pub with its eccentric locals and on folklore, and the ratcheting up of the mystery as no matter where Ruby goes, there the woman is all combine to make a weird, but intriguing tale. And then a rather deft switch to politics for the middle whilst retaining the sense of mystery, and a final return to pure mystery for the finale at the end of Ruby's life.
Atmosphere it does not lack, and Millie pulls of being lead character surprisingly well given what has been generally asked of her since she started, this is a step up in material for her character by a long way, and she rises to seize the opportunity very well indeed.
On the otherhand it is also yet another example of how RTD cannot do an ending, from a cynical point of view like many of his other endings the solution is pulled from nowehere at the last minute and it doesnt even really explain everything, something I have critisized RTD for heavily in the past and he does do it here too, the difference this time is he has done it in a story style where that sort of lack of staifying explantation is the point so it actually works for once.

Two very good episodes back to back, can we actually get a hat-trick?!

quick addition, something I noticed on a rewatch, when people go to the woman, they look at her or as if listening to her, then they look at Ruby, and only then do you they freak out and run off screaming. Like its Ruby's true self they are seeing. Just a thought.}}

{{ My interpretation of 73 Yards, based on a few things RTD has said as well as my own impressions from the episode.

Spoiler:

That's my take on it anyway. }}

Three episodes in a row.

Ok, so RTD still knows how to make good who.

Boom was ok. Not totally buying the characters somehow. Dangerous to say, but it might be the Moffat effect? Great stories and creativity, but I don't fully connect with the characters. Even so, I approve.

73 yards was nice and spooky. Ruby solo is very good.

Dot and bubble was also good and spooky in a different way.

---

I guess it will all add up in the end. It is odd with such different types of episodes.

A thought: Was Maestro a over-the-top evil and dangerous drag queen because they are today's "boogeyman"? As in a threat that isn't real but used to frighten people, and by that fitting in with the superstitions becoming real?

{{ I didn't think Boom was a Moffat classic, but it was just what the show was badly needing- a solid, well written, imaginative Who story, with concrete sci-fi underpinnings, solid performances from all involved, and a chance for Ncuti to consolidate himself more in the role rather than just being chippy and dashing and rushing about all the time. After those first two episodes it was like being greeted by an old familiar friend again.

73 has proved a rather divisive marmite episode among fandom it seems, I for example loved it, my mate Nagual did not, thinking it was boring and all its ideas had been done better before and the unexplained nature of some things (the old woman's gestures, what she says to people) did not intrigue but simply annoyed him.

But either way he did say it felt like Who, just not good Who for him, but still recognisably an episode of Who, and that I think is what the start of this series had been missing, it simply didn't feel like Who, at all.

As to Maestro, interesting idea - the right make boogeymen out of drag queens so why not have a drag queen as the villain. Council of Geeks did a video on this subject, with more insight from them than I could provide as they are trans, and on whether it is a good idea at all, or even hypocritical of RTD to use the trans=villain trope given his removal of Davros' chair on the grounds the disabled =villain trope is wrong.}}

{{  (spoilers ahead for Dot and Bubble) Dot and Bubble had some interesting ideas, but also some very typical RTD issues in its narrative.
First the good, the literal implementation of people living in their own social media bubble and the vacuousness of it was done in a fun way. People being eaten by giant alien slugs was suitable nightmare fuel for the five year olds watching, so that is good Who, even if some of the actual sfx were ropey to say the least. And we got some good Ncuti performance, what we got of him at all that is, even if it was rather too, human, for my personal taste in Doctors.

Talking ropey there is the plot, which as is common with an RTD sci-fi story doesn't bother explaining anything because none of it makes any actual sense. So giant space slugs are eating people who are obliviously living in their digital bubble and don't even see them and walk right into their open maws. We eventually find out they are eating people in alphabetical order as they were designed and made. By who? RTD doesn't bother to follow through on that with an answer. We have to assume they are somehow made and bred and controlled by the Dot, but how basically a flying internet can breed giant slugs and take over worlds without anyone noticing is not explained. We find out the Homeworld has already been completely destroyed and everyone eaten by the slugs, but again how? Is everyone on the Homeworld walking about in a bubble too? But we are earlier told this planet of bubble-heads is exclusively for the children of the elite rich, so its unlikely everyone on the Homeworld is as privileged, and we are also told the Homeworld has armaments, and space tech and ships, but they all got eaten by slow moving slugs whose main attack method is to stand still in plain sight and wait till someone walks right into their mouths?
And we see twice someone getting eaten live on air as they broadcast in front of other people who are watching their stream, so how do people not know?
And we see Dot attack and kill the singer lad, so if the Dots themselves are capable of becoming effectively instant bullets why does it need the giant slugs at all to kill people? For that matter, given we see people just follow its instructions without thought, why not walk them in front of traffic, or off a cliff, down an elevator shaft, anything? The last thing an AI that has almost comlete control over peoples actions and the ability to turn itself into a lethal projectile at a moments notcie would surely think to do, is gentically manipulate and create a race of giant man-eating slugs and wait till everyone has one-by-one walked into them by accident.
So yeah nothing in the plot really makes any sense, how any of it came to be is never explained, what the slugs are or where they came from, or how they travel through space from Homeworld to this planet, how Dot achieved all this, why they couldn't be stopped, why Dot didnt just bullet everyone to death instantly all at once, not a bit of it has the slightest explanation. And the two explanations for things we do get, that Dot is doing it because they have come to hate having to listen to all these rich kids blogging at each other all day, and the slugs got let in from the wild wood outside the colony, also don't make sense, as that would explain only why Dot wanted all the vacuous rich bubbleheads on the planet killed, but not why it would murder everyone on the Homeworld too or how it was capable of achieving any of it. And the slugs being from the Wild Wood doesn't explain how they got off planet to the Homeworld and wiped an entire planet out in such a short time no one even noticed their relatives were out of touch.

Then there is the main character, the actress does a fine job, no problems there, but by design she is a vacuous airhead with no grasp of reality, to the point that without instructions on simple tasks she has problems actually walking without the bubble giving her directions (this also makes no sense but its at least sort of fun and making a point) but it does mean we spend most of the episode with an unlikeable idiot.

I also had a problem with the big twist at the end, that they are a bunch of racists. And my problem was I guessed it right from the pre-credits opening sequence. In it we see her in her bubble scrolling through her friends list. And the very first thing that struck me was that it was very, very odd in this era of Who that every single friend was white. The only possible reason for that in today's always diverse, even where not appropriate, Who, is that they are racists and there are no people of colour on their world. So oddly enough the forced diversity that infests every other episode, gave away the twist for me right from the off by being absent for once.

Another issue I have, and its not strictly speaking with this episode so much as this series, we don't have enough Ncuti, we've only had Boom so far that has really given an episode focusing in any way on this incarnation of the Doctor. He was absent entirely from the last episode, and he and Ruby were barely in this episode. In a series where we only get 8 episodes I question the wisdom of having so many episodes in which the Doctor is either lightly present, not present at all or is not the focus or subject of episodes. We aren't getting a chance to see Ncuti shine as, when he does get the chance, he does shine. But there is so little of it so far its making it harder than it should be for him to cement himself in the role and put his stamp on it. Its like we are just catching glimpses of his Doctor and are still waiting to be fully introduced to him. More Ncuti is required.

Having said that less Ncuti as RTD writes the Doctor however. I have a similar problem as I did with Tennant, too human not alien or Time Lord enough. I think Ncuti's Doctor has now broken down in tears in ever single episode. And I'm not sure the fact they are racists should even bother the Doctor very much, annoy and displease him yes, but would he just leave them to their fate for it? What about any other survivors in the city? Could he not have swallowed his own pride and just said "yes, sorry, you are right, it is the duty of people like me to serve and help people like you, and that's what I am doing. It's my duty to take you to safety and where possible back to your families," and save them anyway, regardless of the fact they are racists instead of having a futile emotional tantrum about it? That would seem more Doctory to me than leaving them to almost die in a forest, given their grasp of reality.


addition- seems RTD has made some, em, comments about this episode, and basically it boils down to the implication if you did not notice at the start that everyone was white, then your probably a racist. So, as I did notice, I am apparently not a racist. Well thank you RTD for confirming that!? But odd way to do it, if you notice, you're not a racist but the episodes ending is ruined for you as you've already got the twist, and if you didn't notice and enjoyed getting got by the twist, bad news you are also a racist.
I'm not sure thats how it works RTD! }}

{{ Spoilers ahead.

So Rogue.......I didn't like that one.

For a variety of reasons, but let's address the big pink rainbow elephant in the room - the Doctor in a same-sex fling with a full on snog. Now in terms of plot of this relationship it is drawing a lot of comparisons with the one in Girl in the Fireplace, and I see why if you just look at the basic outline- a period set piece, aliens dressed in period costume, the Doctor forms a relationship with someone, he saves her from the killer aliens, it has a tragic end with the Doctor left feeling sad.

But for me there is a significant difference, one I just don't like, I would not like it in any Doctor, I would not like it were it heterosexual, and that is how strongly and from the off the Doctor is the one is pursuit of it.
As soon as he spots Rogue he is like a cat in heat, and he pursues Rogue, the Doctor is the active one in the opening legs of this relationship, in fact there only is a relationship because the Doctor so keenly pursues one, and it's not a meeting of minds, it is pure lust across a room, they haven't even spoken when the Doctor hones in on him like a horny torpedo. Yeah, he got some suss readings that pointed Rogue out as someone of interest, but Ncuti's performance makes no bones about it that the Doctor is equally attracted to him from afar based on the purely physical looks. And that's new as is the Doctor actively pursuing someone.
The closest we have come to seeing this is with 11 flirting with River, but that was 2 series into them getting to know each other, this would be like if when 10 first met River he had gone instantly into 11's more direct flirting right at her from the off.

I have said before I dislike the Doctor being sexual at all, I prefer the mad old Time Lord just having adventures with his friends in space, I liked that innocence to him, and it also added to the sense of alienness, as if all that sex stuff was just below his super advanced species and too primitive to bother with or be bothered by, viewed with the sort of disdain Missy gives it when she chastises Clara-

CLARA: Must be love.
MISSY: Oh, don't be disgusting. We're Time Lords, not animals. Try, nano-brain, to rise above the reproductive frenzy of your noisy little food chain, and contemplate friendship. A friendship older than your civilisation, and infinitely more complex.

Or like the 4th Doctor who didn't seem to notice beauty in that manner at all, to the point of not being sure what was even supposed to be attractive for a human anyway - “You're a very beautiful woman...probably.”

Similarly, with Missy - "You're probably handsome, aren't you? Well, congratulations on your relative symmetry."

Time Lords should be beyond all the human stuff, not beyond love, but beyond the details of love as far as the narrative is concerned. In this Ncuti looks at Rogue with pure naked desire. I can think of no other time the Doctor has simply regarded someone with such open desire written all over their face. It for me is one of the most unDoctory things I have ever seen.

So all that part of it aside, it's pretty much the rest of the episode is the problem.
The plot is paper thin and when you say it out loud sounds very stupid.

Basically a bunch of shapeshifting alien bird people have gone to England in the early 1800's because they have been watching episodes of Bridgerton, and want to cosplay in the real life version. They cosplay by killing the person which then lets them assume that person's shape, and they do all this just for fun and plan to go to Parliament and then the Royals next and start some wars, also just for fun. Which gives us one of the worst lines in Who's history, “We are going to cosplay this planet to death”.

We also get one of those new TARDIS powers the show will have to instantly forget about, or it'll break it, and which if it had existed before the writers of this decided it did, would have saved hundreds of lives in previous episodes, the TARDIS can now not just alter your mind to translate languages, it can directly send information to your body so you can instantly know dance moves or fight like a kung-fu champion. It is very stupid, very annoying and if they keep it will ruin more stories than it will improve.  It is simply an awful idea.

The Doctor meanwhile meets a bloke called Rogue, who is really an intergalactic bounty hunter after the bird people, but he thinks there is only 1 of them when there are in fact 5.
The episode is pretty much evenly split between Ruby with her new period friend who is so bland I have forgotten her name, and it's basically a lot of filler killing time till the end when they can reveal her new friend is secretly a bird person and they can play the bluff of Ruby is now dead and replaced. And this is handled badly too, with a 'flashback' scene to the Doctor remembering talking to Ruby's mum when she asked him to keep Ruby safe, only they just made the 'flashback' up for this, it didn't actually happen in an earlier episode, and in fact we have seen so little of Ruby's mum or home life we have zero connection anyway to the emotion they are going for, it's all very contrived, right down to having to actually contrive a flashback. So it's just a bit awkward.  

The other half is the romance between the Doctor and Rogue, finally culminating in them kissing after much dancing, singing and generally thrusting hips at each other in a sexualised manner no other Doctor would ever have done towards anyone, ever.
The culmination of all this I found so stupid it was shorn of any sadness. They come up with a plan to stop the bird people, and it works, capturing them all including the one that the Doctor thinks killed Ruby and took her form, but this plan is a trap that when activated fixes you to the floor, and then when charged dumps you into another dimension. In the set-up for this earlier we are shown that once activated it cannot be stopped and the sonic cannot work on it as it is deadlocked. So how does he get Ruby out? He doesn't. Rogue jumps into the trap and shoves Ruby out, taking her place.

So this super sophisticated trap from the future that locks you in place, you can easily get out of if someone just gives you a push? Why didn't the other bird people just push each other out then? Their arms aren't stuck just their feet. It's mindbogglingly stupid.
And then Rogue gets dumped with the bird people into some unknown dimension forever more (or if he proves as popular as Cpt Jack as they so clearly hope, till they need him again) and the Doctor has a good cry about it. For the tally that's a cry every single episode, though he cries on and off most of this episode, at least three times, so it should probably count as more than 1 on the tally.

And that's another problem with this Doctor so far. As he actually done anything? Has he actually saved anyone? I can't even remember how space babies ends, I've blanked it from my mind with buckie I think, but I don't remember him doing anything heroic. In the music one the Beatles saved him and Ruby, he got trapped in a drum. In Boom the girl's hologram dad saved the Doctor and Ruby after the Doctor failed to save himself or disarm the mine or save Ruby, the ambulance did that after the Priest/soldier gave his life reprogramming it. Ruby saved herself in 73 with the Doctor nowhere to be seen. And in Bubble and Dot he got offended by racists who wouldn't let him save them and cried at them. And in this one Rogue saves Ruby while the Doctor is busy having another good cry about losing her, being seemingly unable to come up with a plan of his own.
Where's the Doctor who once proclaimed, “I'm the Doctor and I save people! And if anyone happens to be listening, and you've got any kind of a problem with that, then to hell with you!” he didn't say, “I'm the Doctor and I hope someone else saves you because I'll be in the corner having a good cry to myself.”

So yeah, overall, it's got a plot you could write on the back of a postage stamp. Most of Millie's stuff is well acted but just filler, most of the Doctor's is romance, tears, singing, tears, dancing and more tears, and the conclusion is laughably bad instead of tragic and moving. }}

Sounds like the Doctor has changed into James Bond from Goldfinger.

I haven't been watching the series (will probably catch up on Iplayer somewhen) seems something of a mixed bag so far, as for the Doctor having a same sex kiss it doesn't bother or interest me anymore than River Song i.e I always prefered the Classic Series take on things-the Doctor was largely asexual and so far removed from humankind that a relationship with a human wouldn't really much make sense and it isn't something I particularly care to see in the series.

Did you notice this Petty? The Richard E Grant Doctor from 2003(?) is now canon again apparently???

https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/sci-fi/doctor-who-rogue-richard-e-grant-newsupdate/

{{ Yes, I suspect its part of the series arc, and the idea all versions of the Doctor are cannon, somewhere. }}

https://www.bigfinish.com/news/v/jodie-whittaker-returns-to-doctor-who

That was quick! Looks like they only started recording these last month.

I never really watched much of the 13th Doctor era on TV (and generally did not enjoy the bits I saw very much) and have always felt Whittaker may have been miscast to a degree...or perhaps more accurately wasn't playing the role/given scripts tailored to her strengths?

Here's hoping Big Finish can work their magic again and develop her Doctor like they did with Colin Baker/Paul Mcgann, I think with the passage of time and a few years to sink in we now have a more sujective look at what works/didn't from her TV era and BF can either develop that or take 13 in a new Direction, Colin Baker excells in the audio dramas precisely because he isn't really playing the 6th Doctor as seen on TV.

Jodie Whittaker has always striked me as a great actress lumbered with uneven scripts and underwritten companions, the 13th Doctor has some interesting quirks and potential for expansion but still feels like a mostly blank slate for me in terms of personality, she's a very generic (though stangely morally dubious) Doctor i.m.o so I'm curious to see where BF take things. The release pattern of 12 individual episodes spread over 2 years seems a bit odd though i.m.o, I wonder if these will be following a series arc or just stand alone stories?

I don't listen/buy as much BF as I used to (mostly just follow the 8th doctor range) but this is exciting news i.m.o if only for the fact that Whittaker seems keen to revisit the role already, it's always interesting to see the Doctors written by other writers (Moffat and RTD don't really have much creative say in what BF have done with the New Who license)

Fingers crossed they can persuade Matt Smith or Peter Capaldi to return soon...

Big Finish are also doing stories with the 'Fugitive Doctor' and the Master from the 13th Doctor TV seasons, I guess they will be crossing over into this range at some point.

I still feel Big Finish will have to move towards a streaming service model one day they simply have too much content these days and it's not affordable to follow as much as I'd like.

You weren't hanging around here during the whittaker era - and are being preternaturally kind to her in comparison to the explosive opinions that were aired.

Though my interest in Who was never very high, the last two series has killed off all interest forever. It's dead as far as I'm concerned.