Resolution

Chapter The 113th, the best new episode of 2019 for sure!

Plot: 
[Spoilers inevitably follow.] On January 1st, two archaeologists, Lin and Mitch, are at work at a dig in the sewers beneath Sheffield town hall. They unearth the remains of a Dalek reconnaissance scout, which has been there since being defeated in the 9th century by combined armies who destroyed the casing and split the squiddy body into three parts. The two other bits were buried in far flung locations, each with a permanent guard. Alas, it manages to become whole again in mere seconds, but the zapping of its two other sections across space to Sheffield sets off an alarm in the TARDIS. The Doctor, Graham, Ryan and Yaz investigate, but by the time they arrive the creature has gone, presumed to have slithered off through the sewers. Really, though, it's taken Lin over; using her, it finds out where its blaster gun has ended up, and builds a new industrial-chic version of its travel machine. The TARDIS team and Mitch (but without Graham) track it down, and rescue Lin, but the Dalek escapes and goes on the rampage.

Graham has been left at home talking to Ryan's n'er-do-well Dad, Aaron, who has turned up at Graham's door on the first day of the new year to make amends. The Doctor returns, scooping up Graham but getting Aaron too (and the conventional oven cum microwave cum Chekhov's gun he's been carrying about trying to flog to people). Anyway, before the Dalek can hijack GCHQ to summon its fellow pepperpots, they use bits of the microwave to zap it. The mutant then sneaks into the TARDIS and tries to take over Aaron. Between them, father and son manage to expel it from the TARDIS into a whirly space thing, and everyone lives happily ever after.

Context:

I watched this on my own one evening from the PVR, just over a week after the initial broadcast. I wanted to leave it a little while, to allow for reflection and to carefully validate my impression on first viewing (more on this anon).  Some things were certainly clearer - the action of the two buried mutant sections zapping over to Sheffield, for example: first time round, I must have literally blinked and missed that they both disappeared, and was confused for a few minutes afterwards, wondering when we would be seeing Siberia and Anuta Island again. Weirdly too, and I didn't notice this on first watch either, the copy on my Humax's hard-drive seems to be missing the sound effect of Graham's doorbell. This completely ruins the Doctor's 'intruder alert' gag. Did anyone else have this, or is there something up with my equipment?

First-time round:

I watched this with the Better Half and eldest child (boy of 12) as it went out live on BBC1 on January 1st of this year. Based on a bad reaction to Tim Shaw's dental collection in episode 1, the youngest (girl of 6) has refused to watch anything of Jodie Whittaker's series since, and - despite efforts to coax her back - this story was treated no differently. Her other brother (boy of 9) kept her company playing computer games in another room. Despite the lack of full family attention, this marks a significant moment: Jodie Whittaker's first series, including this special, was the first one where every episode was watched live on transmission since... I don't know: possibly the early 1980s (when, if you didn't catch it, then it was gone) or possibly ever (I always tended to miss at least one episode back then). Obviously, it has an advantage being on a Sunday, an evening less likely to have prior engagements clashing than Saturday, but it's still testament to this last run's broad appeal in our house (the youngest child excepted, of course, but I'm sure she'll come round eventually).

Reaction

This was a fast-moving fun adventure that delivered the tiny extra bit of oomph that, good as it was, the series of ten episodes in 2018 lacked. Reintroducing the Daleks, well one of 'em at least, pushed things up to 11, and the episode was even able to do something original with the oldest and most recurring Doctor Who nasties. Clever use of brief inserts of foreign locales, voice over and the invented legend of the custodians created an epic feel from the off (though the font used to introduce the locations was an interesting choice). The rest of the action then plays out like The Woman Who Fell to Earth, as an urban action adventure within the Sheffield area. That series opener was confident enough, but this one goes a step beyond it; there's a well earned little moment of grandstanding about a quarter of an hour from the end, when the TARDIS arrives back in Graham's front room, and to an astonished Aaron, he says "It travels in space and time" somewhat triumphantly, as the team - or extended fam - becomes fully formed to rejoin the battle.

The guest cast all do well, particularly Charlotte Ritchie who gives some of the best 'possessed by alien' acting in recent Who history, but also excels with the brave and the sweet stuff. The guest cast mostly get good material to work with too. It felt a bit odd on first watch that Graham is left behind for quite a while. The precedent has been set in the series last year that this TARDIS crew work closely as a team, and avoid too much of the getting split up that many a previous set of regulars in Who's history did. My take on this sequence looking back is that Graham's deliberately been left behind by the Doctor to give Aaron the parenting pep talk he obviously needs. As has been spotted by some commentators before me, the emotional arc of the episode, and arguably the whole series, has been about the men, though: Graham, Ryan and their family interactions. The Doctor is the Doctor, and Jodie doesn't feel sidelined, but it would be nice if some more dramatic material was found for Yaz, otherwise she risks becoming the season 19 Nyssa of this era, never getting much to do (at least Yaz never had stories this year where she didn't leave the TARDIS or spent the whole time asleep).

On the subject of Yaz, the inclusion of a scene with police officers reminded me of her job, and I wondered - what's going on with Yaz's job? It's probably best not to wonder this, and no doubt some online fans would round on me for dragging Doctor Who down to mundane everyday things, and tell me Sarah Jane was never bothered about what was going on in the world of journalism while she was swanning off around the universe, and so on. Alas, this story being set on January 1st has set the clock ticking, and the old 'Doctor will get you back 5 minutes before you left' trick can't apply. The Woman Who Fell to Earth and Arachnids in the UK are both set in September ("Halloween's next month, mate", "It's only half an hour since you left"), so more than three months have passed since Yaz made the decision to travel with the Doctor full time. At that point, Ryan explicitly says he's not interested in working in a warehouse any more, but Yaz doesn't mention her career. It wouldn't have fit to mention it during the present day scenes in Demons of the Punjab, and that's the last time before now that we've seen the TARDIS return to Sheffield. Is there a whole story to make of this in future? Probably not, but it might be nice if police feature again in a present day Sheffield story to make something of it, just for the obsessives like me in the audience.

For a somewhat dark story, there was also some room for light-hearted material too. The removal of UNIT from the show was a good choice, this era's equivalent of Russell T Davies killing off the Time Lords: our team are on their own, the first and last line of defence for the Earth. Getting a lovely comedy sequence from this - the Doctor's collision with Austerity Britain's realities in a conversation with a call centre operative - was a bonus. The very much un-disbanded GCHQ were good sports, tweeting the following day that they'd just about finished clearing up after the Dalek attacked (anyone who's wrestled with the GCHQ Puzzle Books will know there must be a few Doctor Who fans working there). The other comic bit, where the action cuts to a family bemoaning the lack of wi-fi, was less successful. It might have worked had the family been introduced cold, and the Doctor's explanation followed, perhaps. There's not much else in the way of niggles; the only other thing that didn't work was that the Dalek's shell was built far too well and too quickly. There's a line thrown in about how it's used remnants of the original, but it doesn't convince. Overall, though, the very big positives far outweighed any small flaws.

Connectivity: 

Two stories on the trot featuring New Year's celebrations and Dalek action.

Deeper Thoughts:
Crashing to judgement. As I stated above, I wanted to leave some time for reflection before I blogged 2019’s only new Doctor Who episode. This was mostly prompted by a quick and regrettable check of #doctorwho tweets on the evening of January 1st. Reader, like any internet space where people discuss Doctor Who, or indeed discuss anything, there be dragons. Amusingly, someone had tweeted a screengrab of two adjacent tweets on their feed; they read (and I paraphrase) “That was the best Doctor Who story ever!” and “Thanks for some more shit, Chibnall”. Such immediate post-broadcast polarisation is restrained as these things go: people say a lot worse, and they don’t wait until the story’s even finished to do so. I fear I too have been guilty of rushing to judgement, and wanted to do things differently this time.

For instance, last year’s festive special Twice Upon a Time got a mauling here. I think it’s the harshest I’ve been covering a story for the blog so far. This was only days after broadcast, and I’d only watched it twice. Is that enough to have a clear and comprehensive view? Well, maybe it’s too much. After all, the vast majority of the audience are only ever going to watch it once. Still, the blog is supposed to be more in-depth that casual viewer stuff, so I decided to invest a little more time. I didn’t mean to take quite so long, though: January’s always a busy time, and I find I still have loads of box sets of Doctor Who to watch. The release rate hasn’t been this frantic since the 1990s: I’m still working through the Davison box set, the Jodie Whittaker series 11 box set has recently arrived, and there’ll be another box set released next month too.  After a drought in Who physical media, I’m suddenly drowning.

One of the other Blu-rays in my recent glut of purchases was the aforementioned Twice Upon a Time. I finally succumbed and bought it. It seems that the new thing is for the specials not to be included on the season box sets (you have to pay extra for Resolution as a standalone release too – cheap money-grabbing BBC Worldwide). Watching Twice Upon a Time again after a year, I was a tiny bit less frustrated by it. The narrative - lots of repetitive incident that just postpones an inevitable and telegraphed ending – is a legitimate story structure (Robert Mckee’s 'Story' identifies it as the shape of most Bond movies, and Leaving Las Vegas, amongst others). And that structure reflects life, so who am I to argue with it? I’m very conscious of this, I think, because I’m watching the UK news a lot. Like my inability to resist peeking in to the sawdust-floored pub brawl that is a twitter timeline, I also can’t resist checking in regularly to live news feeds about Brexit. If ever there was a real world example of grinding repetitious tedium leading to an inevitable conclusion, it’s the last two years of negotiations about the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union.

The climax point has been reached: anyone with any sense knew that it wasn’t possible to come up with a deal that would please everybody, and lo and behold, the vote on Tuesday 15th January demonstrated that it was a deal that pleased nobody. Now, we’re running out of script. In a constructed narrative, this sort of story beat would precipitate major change: Peter regenerates into Jodie, Theresa resigns and is replaced by who knows who. But, this time, nothing appears to have changed at all. The central character is not budging an inch as far as I can see. It’s as if a new Who series started in October 2018, and played out Twice Upon a Time again. Boring and painful, in other words. If one were to check twitter (don’t) the reactions would be familiar: “No Deal will be the best thing ever!” and “Thanks for some more shit, Prime Minister”.  Representative government, like Doctor Who, relies on regular change to keep it from stagnating, but despite all the drama it more and more - unlike Doctor Who - looks to be in paralysis. I don’t want Brexit to end badly, but I really do want it to end.

In Summary:

A big ol' invasion of the gun-totin' Dalek!