Watching the 8th episode right now and i had the exact same feeling as others here. She's overall good, i'm sure she needs more time to be the Doctor, at this point i have the feeling that she's just playing it. Even Capaldi had it, in his own terms, Jodie is having a bit of struggle. My guess is on the actual writing of the episodes: as someone said already, too much history and, subsequently, too much "not intervening to avoid contaminating history", in that way the Doctor never leaves an actual mark in the Universe, the exact opposite of what was happening all the time with basically the previous four actors.
Back to the history question: i think IMHO that's the overall main problem. If you "force" the narration mainly to past earth events, you have to be at least 100% coherent and logic, but really no one literally blinks an eye when two white people and a black guy together witn a Pakistani girl shows up in the Indian border 70 years ago, or the same team in 1600 in the English middle of nowhere. Not sure it's accurate, pretty sure it feels weird. In the past seasons, characters had to dress properly and hide themselves just to blend in everywhere, they're just going everywhere and in every point of time with the same nylon or leather jacket. Again, weird.
Closing points, really quick:
- no horizontal plot for now, just free roaming through time and space (80% on earth, right), so 0 involvement for me.
- really TOO MUCH political correctness! Of course i'm a fan of it, but what the hell, i'm watching a sci-fi product, i always had a sci-fi product, some tech devices and a couple of aliens is not enough, we're accustomed to great galaxy wars, eternal battles, huge alien structures, time loops. Where the hell is all that!?
- A new actor means a new type of Doctor, yes, but not an entirely NEW Doctor. No one knows her, no one heard her name, it's like she has no history, no past events, Everything feels like it's a fresh start and a reebot. Maybe they want to give more attention to the newcomers, which is fair to a commercial level, but come on, there's guys like who follow this show since episode one, it's pretty disappointing.
- Tech doesn't feel like tech enymore, feels much more like alien magic. Might be cool, but i'm watching a fantasy show right now and not a sci-fi show.
tl;dr political correctness is changing this show too deeply. Might change my opinion for the last two epsiodes, but i'm reeeeeally skeptical.
EDIT: the 9th episode was a bit better, it added more to the DW lore, maybe not needed but always appreciated (by the way, the last scene with the universe-frog could have been Whittaker's epic monologue as it was for Tennant's The Devil's Pit, they totally missed the chance). But the last episode, that was a HUGE one. One of the most beautiful ever made imho, really, that's what i personally have always expected from Doctor Who. Just a bit sad we had to wait for the last slice of it to have a true DW story, but my hype has spiked again a bit!
Review by ragreynoldsVIP 7BlockedParentSpoilers2023-01-14T00:01:49Z
Season 10 was a big step down in quality from season 9, and this season (11) is an even bigger step down again. Jodie as The Doctor is not bad at all, in fact, I think she has a lot of potential, and she does her best with what she has to work with. However, the same cannot be said for her companions. Aside from Jodie, almost everyone in this season is annoying, boring, or simply uninteresting.
Ryan is incredibly annoying and he lowers the quality of every scene he is in, while Graham feels totally out of place as though he's acting in a completely different show from everyone else. It's as though they saw Bradley Walsh out in the street and said "Hey, come in here for a second!" and handed him some lines and told him to give it his best shot. Yaz is the least-bad offender of the season's three companions, but that's only because she's too bland to stand out as annoying or out of place.
The writing this season is poor and uninspiring, and the overall tone of the show just feels... off. It doesn't feel like Doctor Who. It feels like a different show. It is even filmed differently to previous seasons. The show up until this point has had its fair share of up and downs, with some episodes being not so great, and others being amazing. But I was always happy to push on and persevere the bad because I knew that something great was sure to be right around the corner. This season is the first time when I've watched Doctor Who that I've felt entirely unmotivated to continue on; because I am no longer sure that something great will be around the corner. In my opinion, this is the first season that hasn't had a single 'good' episode. There were a couple of okay episodes, but the vast majority were either meh or just bad.
The worst crime this season commits is that it's not quite bad enough to be entertainingly bad. With a few adjustments, it would still have been bad, but it could have at least been 'hot mess' type of bad, where it was entertaining enough to keep me watching. Instead, this season just made me wish I were watching pretty much anything else.