Doctor Who Season 12 rewatch - 12.6-12.11

[unfeathered]

12.6 Praxeus

This was yet another episode where I felt like there was a great story circling just out of reach but I couldn't quite grasp it. Or the writers couldn't quite grasp it. Or something.

I liked Gabriella. I quite liked Adam and Jake. Suki was interesting despite being a really one note kind of actress. The pathogen chasing plastic was quite interesting, even if the message apparently needed an anvil to get it across. (I don't know, maybe most people didn't know about all the gyres and microplastics etc.? Maybe it just felt anvil-y to me because I already know about all that stuff?)

Nice to see Yaz actually getting to do stuff (and taking Gabriella with her). She's actually pretty capable, when she's given the chance.

Note: "The Doctor's opening monologue places Praxeus as taking place "early in the third decade of the 21st century." That actually seems pretty damn late to me, given the sheer urgency of the climate crisis right now.


12.7 Can you hear me?

Original post here. Nothing more to add.


12.8 The Haunting of Villa Diodati
Well, I have no notes from last time and I suspect it's because then as now I got thoroughly bored. It's strange – there was a lot happening in this episode and whilst I was vaguely interested in the mystery of it, it also felt like it went on forever. And once again I just didn't feel anything. Mary Shelley was quite engaging and I kind of cared about her. (And the butler, actually.) But everyone else? Caricatures, no depth to any of them.

And all the threats felt very bitty. Ghosts, shifting rooms, reanimated skeleton hands…

Note for when I can't remember again: the house shifting etc. was Shelley in the basement possessed by the Cyberium making everything shift to protect everyone from Ashad.

I did quite like the way that whatshisname sleepwalking through the walls alerted the Doctor to the fact that the walls were just an illusion.

Second note to self: Byron was Ada Lovelace's father (I did actually notice the Doctor referencing this, this time around). Not sure whether there was supposed to be any point to this, or whether the writers just like this period!

Lake Geneva looked an awful lot like Wales…

Oh, nice bit at the end with Claire giving Byron what-for.

How did Jack know about the Lone Cyberman, in order to warn the Doctor? Especially given it doesn't seem like he's time-travelling again (either from the mentions of him in the series, or from the various audios).

Interesting point from Den of Geek - Did Captain Jack, who was present for a similar dilemma in The Parting of the Ways, really expect her to sacrifice the Earth to wipe the Cybermen out for good?


12.9 Ascension of the Cybermen
Again, no notes from my first viewing of this one and, again, I assume it's because it was so boring there was nothing to say…

I suppose there was at least a tiny bit of tension when Yaz and Graham and the others were stuck in a dying space ship, but since there was no way those two were going to be killed off it didn't really feel very tense. I quite liked Yaz's attempts to improve morale, and the way Graham grudgingly followed her, but in the end it was all down to blind chance that they broke down where they did, within range of an Cyber ship that just happened to be fully functional with breathable air and (presumably) a forcefield that kept that air in the bay where they landed…

Also, forgive me if I'm being too obvious, but they seemed surprised when they discovered that the Cyber carrier ship was carrying… lots of Cybermen. What else did they think it would be carrying?

Ashad… is at least a vaguely scary threat, but I found myself switching off through most of his scenes without apparently missing much. I'm not really into Cybermen anyway, plus I found it pretty hard to understand what he was saying…

Of the guest characters, I liked Ravio (I liked Julie Graham in Sarah Jane too) and especially her little moment of flirting with Graham, but starey-eyes guy (Yedlami, apparently) got on my nerves and the others didn't seem to have much character. Ko Sharmus at least had some presence and looked like the sort of character who could have been very interesting, but that never seemed to actually happen.

And the whole thing with the snippets of Brendan's life… Even now I know that apparently the Doctor was supposed to be experiencing those, there was still no indication on screen that she was, no reaction, no "That's weird", no tying in to what was happening. And I still think his first resurrection after falling off the cliff was far more reminiscent of Captain Jack than a Time Lord, with the whole gasping back into life and no regeneration! Plus I have absolutely no idea what was going on at the end when he retired but his father and police sergeant (or whatever he was) were still young – wtf was that all about?

From TARDIS wiki
Brendan was a Matrix construct, (TV: The Timeless Children) purported to be the adopted son of Meg and Patrick, after they discovered him as a baby in Ireland. (TV: Ascension of the Cybermen) Brendan's story was an analogue for the Timeless Child's, used to hide the true origin of the Time Lords within the Matrix. According to the Master, Tecteun masked this story under a visual filter so that anyone who chanced upon it would find this piece of history to be unremarkable. (TV: The Timeless Children)

The dates given in Chris Chibnall's script for the Brendan scenes are not literally possible. The script states that the scene where Patrick finds the "six-month-old" Brendan takes place in "Late 1940s West Coast Ireland", specifically 1947; but that Brendan's "first birthday", at which he is 18 months old, also takes place in 1947. Brendan is five years old on his first day of school in 1950, and "8 or 9" in 1951. He is in his "late teens" in 1953, when he joins the gardaí. He gets shot in 1955. Brendan is in his "late 60s" when he retires, but the retirement scene is repeatedly described as "1970s style" and specified to take place in 1973. – so this kind of explains why he'd aged but they hadn't, but nothing about it on screen!


12.10 The Timeless Children
Original 'insta-reaction' here

Okay. Not a terrible episode, though it felt a bit long and definitely could have done with a bit more pace and tension. I mean, I know there were bits where people were in danger – quite a few bits – but I never felt particularly scared for anyone.

Graham's idea of hiding inside the Cybermen was quite ingenious and actually quite spooky given Bill's recent experience, and the way Yaz's tear dropping inside the armour echoed Bill's. Thought the Graham/Yaz talk was just silly. Yet another example of these guys sitting around chatting when they should be dashing about ramping up the tension. Why were Ravio and the other guy the only ones working on emptying out the Cyber suits? In the old days, people had these sort of conversations whilst saving the day! Just look at the radiation chamber Jack/Ten conversation!

Quite enjoyed Ryan and the others fighting the Cyberman – I did actually feel something for Ryan when he managed to chuck the grenade correctly, bless him. And Ko Sharmus was a very engaging character, as mentioned last week. This time around, I didn't feel so annoyed either that at the end he marched in and set off the bomb instead of the Doctor. After all, he did make the point that it was he who'd sent the Cyberium back in time so actually he'd started it all, not her. And I rather enjoyed the fact that however determined the Doctor was, she couldn't press the button. Very much felt like a call back to "What are you Doctor, coward or killer?" "Coward, any day."

Glad that Ashad disappeared quite quickly, because he was boring and I couldn't understand most of what he said. The Master is much more interesting and, even if he was a little too crazy for me here, at least he's entertaining, and has good chemistry with the Doctor. Well, as much as anyone can have chemistry with someone who's paralysed and barely has any lines. Jodie did her best, but she wasn't given much to work with, not until that lovely bit at the end.

I of course protested when the Master set tiny!Ashad down on the floor instead of putting him somewhere sensible like his pocket, but assumed he was preoccupied with the Cyberium. At least that turned out not to be a plot hole, as he later claimed he'd left tiny!Ashad and his death particle there for the Doctor to find, just to see if she really would destroy everything.

I did enjoy the parallel that now exists between them: they have both destroyed Gallifrey. (Well, okay, it turned out the Doctor didn't, actually, in the end, but he thought he had, for a long time.)

Regarding the Master and his pure craziness here and the apparent lack of continuity between Missy (on the road to redemption) and him (totally back to his destructive ways), I've seen a few people theorising that it's because (as was actually said in the episode) he just couldn't face the idea that the Doctor actually *was* so much more important than he was. That a part of the Doctor had made him what he was. Perhaps even that Missy had become so soft because a part of the Doctor was in her. And so he reacted badly, and reverted to his evil ways.

I still feel that the Timeless Child didn't need to turn out to be the Doctor, but actually I did rather like the way she came to terms with it (to some extent) and claimed that it made her more.

I did wonder how there were at least two TARDISes so intact amongst all the death and destruction. And also whether there might have been more weapons/bombs/devices that could have been used as a timer for a bomb in those TARDISes…

Loved the Doctor doing a sequential "What? What? WHAT?" at the Judoon appearing at the end – very reminiscent of Ten and the Titanic at the end of a similarly Master-ful end of season story!

Why is the episode called The Timeless Children, not The Timeless Child?

Oh, and further to my wondering what the hell the Irish story was last week, the Master claimed it was a cover story that Tecteun had placed over the redacted files of the Doctor's time in the Division – the Master said she could take it however she wanted, in other words it was supposed to be ambiguous. Hmm…

Also, when did all this happen for the Master? Hacking the Matrix and then destroying all the Time Lords? Was it after Spyfall, i.e. chronologically with the series? Or was it soon after regenerating, and what caused him to be so angry, so manic? And if so, why was he content to sit pretending to be O in the outback for so long, or wait seventy-something years without causing any trouble during Spyfall pt 2? More questions I suspect we will never get the answers to...


12.11 Revolution of the Daleks
Original posts here and here

I saw it pointed out in various comments in my previous trawling of reviews that Jack in this episode is uncharacteristically keen on spewing information about himself when normally/in the past he plays everything very close to his chest. And I really noticed that this time – within minutes of having met the Fam again he's telling them he's immortal (after saying extermination was his first death) and, more, that it was caused by the Doctor, the TARDIS and a girl called Rose who's now stuck in a separate dimension! Very uncharacteristic.

The Doctor's five bar gates in her cell were actually (I think) ten bar gates? A bit different. Also, Jack said it took him 19 years to get the cell next to hers, so presumably it was quite a bit longer than that that she was in there.

Jack's Vortex Manipulator appears to a) have teleport capabilities again (actually I guess it did in Fugitive of the Judoon too, or was he using the ship's teleport there?) and b) to have got smoother at teleporting! At least, no reactions were made to any roughness on his jump out of the prison with the Doctor or on his jump to the Dalek ship with Graham and Ryan, only on their escape from it – which might actually have been down to the Daleks trying to exterminate them.

The Doctor was surprised it had been ten months for her companions because she set her TARDIS to exactly the same spatial and temporal coordinates as she sent their TARDIS too. Okay, that makes sense now then, why she was aghast at it being ten months.