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(Original review here)
I think it says a lot about our (my son’s and my) ‘meh’ feelings about our first watch of S11 that it’s taken us OVER TWO YEARS to get to our rewatch of it, though admittedly it’s partly also because we were rewatching the whole lot from S1 again and took that long to get here. But now that we are here…
Two episodes in and I’m afraid I’m still ‘meh’. The reasons I covered here are, I'm afraid, still valid. Son and I agreed, on discussing after this episode (Ghost Monument) that everything is just too safe and nice. I love Thirteen, Graham, Yas and Ryan, they're lovely people, but they're too nice. Where's the conflict? A little tiny bit of mild aggro between Graham and Ryan but that's about it. They all have absolute faith in the Doctor so no conflict there. Hell, the two guest characters had more character than this lot!
It has been mentioned before, I can't remember by whom (probably Elisi, maybe Astrogirl, maybe both) that Thirteen took Twelve's advice to be 'kind' and turned it into be 'nice' and this totally feels like what I'm seeing here.
In that post I linked to I mentioned the lack of humour, which I definitely felt here, but upon reflection and discussion with son we realised it's not just humour but silliness. Doctor Who has always been silly. Sometimes the Doctor himself has been silly, but if not (e.g. One) then it's been other people poking fun at him. But the show has always poked fun at itself. But I feel here like this new show is taking itself incredibly seriously, and in doing so, it's lost a lot of what makes it Doctor Who.
I think it says a lot about our (my son’s and my) ‘meh’ feelings about our first watch of S11 that it’s taken us OVER TWO YEARS to get to our rewatch of it, though admittedly it’s partly also because we were rewatching the whole lot from S1 again and took that long to get here. But now that we are here…
Two episodes in and I’m afraid I’m still ‘meh’. The reasons I covered here are, I'm afraid, still valid. Son and I agreed, on discussing after this episode (Ghost Monument) that everything is just too safe and nice. I love Thirteen, Graham, Yas and Ryan, they're lovely people, but they're too nice. Where's the conflict? A little tiny bit of mild aggro between Graham and Ryan but that's about it. They all have absolute faith in the Doctor so no conflict there. Hell, the two guest characters had more character than this lot!
It has been mentioned before, I can't remember by whom (probably Elisi, maybe Astrogirl, maybe both) that Thirteen took Twelve's advice to be 'kind' and turned it into be 'nice' and this totally feels like what I'm seeing here.
In that post I linked to I mentioned the lack of humour, which I definitely felt here, but upon reflection and discussion with son we realised it's not just humour but silliness. Doctor Who has always been silly. Sometimes the Doctor himself has been silly, but if not (e.g. One) then it's been other people poking fun at him. But the show has always poked fun at itself. But I feel here like this new show is taking itself incredibly seriously, and in doing so, it's lost a lot of what makes it Doctor Who.
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I totally agree with you about the lack of friction between the TARDIS team. They don't have to fight with each other, but there needs to be at least some personality clash like you saw between Tegan and Turlough, where they sometimes rubbed each other the wrong way. With "The Ghost Monument" in particular, though, even the guest characters weren't that interesting. They were supposed to be competitors in a no-holds-barred race, but they barely fought/argued/tricked at all. I was hoping it was going to be a "Doctor keeps them from tearing each other's throats out and teaches them how to work together" story.
DW is also missing the surreal. We don't get to see weird societies and situations like in "Gridlock", "The Doctor's Wife", or "The End of the World", or like in many of the classic episodes like "City of Death", "The Happiness Patrol", or "Paradise Towers". It's become standard science fiction in outlook.