New Who New Year's Day special: Resolution

[strange_complex]

Oh dear, yeah. I didn't have hugely high hopes, but I'm afraid that really did feel like Doctor Who by numbers to me. Basic plot-line - a Dalek is unleashed, causes a bit of havoc before being tracked down by the Doctor, and is then defeated via a combination of Technobabble and the Power of Love. We've definitely seen that story before, and the arc involving Ryan's Dad was particularly poorly integrated into it. It really made me miss RTD, who made those sorts of emotive personal plot-lines into the beating hearts of his stories, rather than feeling like an awkwardly bolted-on extra.

It's a pity, because I have a soft spot for Doctor Who stories involving archaeology (which as a real-life form of time travel offers a lot of potential for parallels with what the Doctor does), and the three Custodians seemed exciting initially. I could really have gone for a story in which their descendants had to come together and work with the Doctor (in the place of the lost third) to save the world. But we didn't get that, and even within what we did get I felt the design department did a pretty poor job of putting together the materials about the legend. Would it have been too much to ask for some authentic-looking ninth-century documents, rather than a picture-book which looked like it had been bought in The Works?

Oh well. Plenty of time to forget all about it before the next series...

Comments

[qatsi]

We thought it was OK, but not brilliant, like most of the season. Yes, RTD probably did the "domestic" better, and Moffat would have tied up more convincingly into the canon. But on the plus side the UNIT hiatus has brought the Express out in spots, because it thinks it's an allegory for Brexit. (I actually thought it was more of an allegory for austerity, but there you go). YMMV.

[strange_complex]

Yeah, I read it as about austerity primarily, though be to fair they did also specifically mention European funders pulling out. So, maybe a bit of both?