The Ghost Monument

Chapter the 249th, in which it looks very much like they-all's in a race...

Plot: 

Immediately after the end of her first adventure in Sheffield, the Doctor, along with Graham, Yaz and Ryan, is suspended in the vacuum of space. All are quickly scooped up by two people in spaceships racing one another, boys taken into the ship piloted by Angstrom, girls in the very old and collapsing one piloted by Epzo. It is the last leg of a rally of various dangerous rounds that started with hundreds of competitors, these two being the only last ones remaining. The next destination is the planet Desolation. Angstrom lands her ship first, but Epzo's crashes, narrowly avoiding Graham and Ryan; luckily, nobody is hurt. The race's organiser Ilin appears to everyone as a hologram, and tells of the final challenge. They must cross the hostile environments of Desolation until they reach the Ghost Monument; from the description given, the Doctor realises this is her TARDIS, phasing in and out of reality. Helping out the two competitors, the Doctor and Fam escape many different terrors - flesh-eating microbes in the water, patrolling sniper robots, sentient and telepathic strips of fabric - and discover that this planet was taken over and made into a weapons factory by the Stenza. When they reach the site of the monument, the TARDIS is nowhere to be seen. Reluctantly, the projected-in Ilin accepts that Angstrom and Epzo - who've learned the strengths of cooperation along the way - can share the prize, and he and they vanish. Left alone, the fam hears a noise: it's the TARDIS appearing. Once the Doctor has stabilised it, they all get in and see the newly redecorated interior. The Doctor offers everyone a lift back home.

Context:

Watched from the BBC iplayer (I must get round to ordering a new Blu-ray remote before the classic series season 2 box-set comes out) accompanied again by all three children (boys of 16 and 13, girl of 10). The eldest and youngest were losing interest by the end, but middle child was glued to the screen, transfixed throughout. This was a bit surprising as, with his enthusiasm for Doctor Who expanding, he has sought out many youtube videos to watch, some run by the angrier end of the fandom spectrum. I've finally had to have the sort of heated discussions I've up to now avoided by refusing to engage on social media, e.g. about how - in the boy's and the angry nerds' opinion -  Chris Chibnall's Timeless Child arc has ruined everything that is special about Doctor Who, and created too many continuity errors. This is how full-on a fan he is becoming. Luckily, the brief mention of that arc here (the Remnants can see into the Doctor's past and namecheck "the Timeless Child" at one point) did not put him off.

First Time Round:

Watched live, including the obligatory two minutes of the end of the preceding show Countryfile, on the story's debut BBC1 broadcast on Sunday the 14th October 2018. All the family were watching bar the youngest - six years old at the time - who was refusing to watch any Doctor Who at that point as Tim Shaw's toothy face (and not in the Tom Baker way) had scared her the previous week. This latest watch was her first time seeing The Ghost Monument. She said afterwards that it was "Okay".

Reaction: 

The Ghost Monument slams onto the screen at a hectic pace and doesn't let up for a good while. The early scenes of our heroes being rescued from space only to find themselves in the next chaotic situation aboard spaceships are well realised, well performed and well shot. They then arrive on planet Desolation, filmed in South Africa, and I don't think it's hyperbole to say that it is depicted with the best visuals of any Doctor Who story up to that point. Following the pattern established when the show came back in 2005, Whittaker's first episodes of this 2018 series started with an Earth based adventure story, strange things happening in the commonplace world of the new companion characters, and would go on in its third story to journey back in time. In between is the story where the people from the commonplace contemporary Earth are thrust into an alien world with futuristic tech and many monsters. This time, though, it's beautiful too; the widescreen vistas are almost a statement of intent: we're giving you alien, but it's going to look good. After seven minutes of pacey sequences, there's the scene of the spaceship crashing into the planet as Graham, Ryan and Angstrom sprint to get out of its path. No exaggeration, it's Hollywood movie levels of quality. It screams 'budget's been spent on this!', but not at the cost of breaking the viewer's suspension of disbelief. Events keep on coming to keep us engaged: the TARDIS 'fam' are reunited, the concept of the race - a simple but effective structure for the action - is set up, and the characters are on their way, journeying to their destination with stunning backdrops along the way.

The pace unfortunately can't sustain for the whole of the story. Towards the end, there's a scene where, having reached the area of the Ghost Monument, one of the two competitors has to beat / betray the other in order to win. It should be a fast and dramatic scene, but it's static and talky. I don't blame director Mark Tonderai, who does solid work throughout - I think it's more the curse of 50 minute episodes, which Doctor Who adopted from Jodie Whittaker's first story onwards. The extra five minutes, compared to the standard 21st century episodes of the previous years, might not seem like much, but it puts a disproportionate strain on this kind of breakneck actioner. It does, though, allow for more character moments, like Epzo's speech about his mother's unconventional parenting style, utilising a cruel twist on a trust exercise. The story is focussed by only having three in-person guest parts (one a cameo), and each gives a great performance. Susan Lynch as Angstrom and Shaun Dooley as Epzo are as good as you'd expect, and both are of the 'how come they've not been in Doctor Who before now' contingent, as is Art Malik as Ilin. Malik makes the most of only a couple of scenes to be the contemptuous amoral presence running this survival challenge. He gives a nice line reading with his final, half-smiling 'No' as he disappears, abandoning the Doctor and friends after having been asked to help them. It's a happy ending, though, with the new TARDIS design being revealed to characters and audience alike. It was a bit disappointing for me, though. It looks alright, with the crystalline approach perhaps in some way reflecting the coral version of the first ever 21st century console. But I don't like the fact that the doors now don't open into the larger space, but instead into a police box-sized antechamber stuck on to the main area. It reduces the impact and the magic when any new character first steps in.

Lots of little touches lift the simple story to be something a bit special. By holding back the TARDIS interior and the first beginning credits sequence to this second episode, there's still new aspects of this era to reveal. Part of the purpose of this story, as mentioned above, is to highlight the alien nature of their surroundings for the three new companions, and undercut their preconceived expectations. For example, when Yaz appeals to the two competitors that they should work together with her and her friends, as fellow human beings: "I'm Muxteran; she's Albarian" replies Epzo; "I've never even heard of Moomin-beans" adds Angstrom. Making the Stenza, the aliens from the previous story, the people that devastated the planet and terrorised the scientists there to build them weapons adds an overarching coherence to the series. It also allows Graham and Angstrom to share something despite their differences, both of their partners having died at the hands of the Stenza. The Remnants - the sentient scraps of fabric - are an interestingly new idea for a monster, looking innocuous at first until one attacks and you're being suffocated. The dialogue is lively and characterful, production design and interiors seamlessly match the quality of the exterior visuals, and Segun Akinola's score is great throughout. Best of all, so good you might already take her for granted, is Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor doing all those wonderful Doctorish things: name-dropping famous people from history, schooling her companions about pacifism, and later teasing out Ryan's learning from his NVQ to help them in a tight situation. As a showcase for the new lead actor, this story can't be faulted.

Connectivity: 

Both stories appear in the first season of a new Doctor and new showrunner; it's the third such story in a row, in fact, starting with The Vampires of Venice (just like the Vampire story, The Ghost Monument features extensive foreign filming and hints about an arc plot element - The Timeless Child, The Silence - that won't be paid off until the next season). Both The Ghost Monument and Father's Day feature a crash early on that two cast members playing relatives only narrowly avoid. This is the third story in a row where a featured monster race isn't named in dialogue - the snake-like strips of cloth are known as Remnants in fandom commentary, but never referred to as such on screen.

Deeper Thoughts:

Chibnall and Whittaker's Almanac. A few weeks back when I posted about Orphan 55, I hoped another Jodie Whittaker story would come up before the end of the year, and so it has come to pass. At that point, in late October just after the broadcast of The Power of the Doctor, it was too soon to process my thoughts on the Jodie Whittaker / Chris Chibnall era, as the finale was still fresh in my mind. Now, enough time has gone by to consider the period as a whole. Whatever one thinks of the quality of the stories he created, Chibnall will always have a special place in Who history as the Doctor Who showrunner who first cast a woman to play the lead role, just as Whittaker will be known for being that first female Doctor. This is important enough to outweigh any negatives that might be aimed at the era, I feel. I remember before a woman was ever cast in the role, but knowing it was an inevitability, thinking that the real pressure would not be on that initial casting, but the immediately next recasting of the role afterwards. If one were to cast a man next (as indeed they have with Ncuti Gatwa), it risks making a female Doctor Who look like a brief experiment, or worse, a failure. Chibnall put in a pre-emptive fix, though, whether he meant it as such or not, by casting Jo Martin as another Doctor that made occasional appearances in Whittaker's tenure. He made history again casting the first person of colour to play the Doctor, to boot. Of course, one big thing that characterised Chibnall's time as showrunner was unending criticism of him and his story decisions. It might be that such a reaction is common for all Doctor Who eras, but it has seemed more pronounced this time. One criticism I've seen from a few online fans now that the era is completed is that Martin wasn't used enough. I disagree: less is more, and the character of the 'fugitive Doctor' always had a great impact in the few surprise appearances after being introduced.

I think fans very keen on Jo Martin's Doctor need to be realistic about a showrunner not wanting to overshadow their lead actor. Whittaker comes over as a very generous performer, and this shows in the way she pitched her performance in scenes with Martin (always on the back foot allowing Martin to be a more traditional authoritative version of the character), but she's still the star of the show. There is talk of more spin-offs happening in future; if that had been true of this era (Chibnall is the first 21st century showrunner not to have a spin-off series run during his time in charge) it would have been a no-brainer to me for Chibnall to trial a series called The Division to give Martin's Doctor more opportunities to shine. Anyway, she will continue to feature in 'extended universe' tie-in media like books and Big Finish audio plays. In a way, I feel it's Whittaker that wasn't used enough. She did her traditional three seasons and specials, the pattern for the three Doctors preceding her, but her seasons were shorter, particularly the Covid-curtailed third season, Flux. The quality of her contributions to any story has been high and has never wavered, so I'm left wanting more (and I can't be the only one). She really nailed it, particularly in what I think is her most effective and important performance (and Chibnall's best moment too). Curiously, this wasn't in the main series, but was the short video made at the start of the Covid lockdown in the UK where she reassured younger viewers. The stories in the three seasons proper came in for a lot of criticism from fans for the quality of their writing, and they were a mixed bag, but no more mixed than any other season of Doctor Who in the 21st century. There have been some clunky lines of dialogue too, but again that isn't unique to any particular period or producer.

Maybe some of this criticism was coming from those dissatisfied that the Doctor was being played by a woman and finding any possible faults, or maybe it was people who can't forgive Chibnall for the rushed and often dodgy first series of Torchwood, for which he was showrunner, or other stories he wrote during other showrunners' tenures. He doesn't get enough kudos for the things that turned out right, though, and there were lots of those right from the off. As mentioned, my sons have fallen back in love with Doctor Who again recently, particularly the middle child, a boy of 13. He's watching a story a day on average. Recently, he put on The Woman Who Fell to Earth; I watched some of it with him, and saw just how strong an opening story it was; having now watched the following story The Ghost Monument and knowing Rosa comes next, I was reminded (and I had genuinely forgotten) what an incredibly powerful start the series had. The decision to write an entirely original set of stories in that first year, using no returning elements from the show's history, was a brave and original one. Usually, a sparing use of old friends or foes is de rigueur for big openers or finales, but it wasn't needed for that big relaunch; so, the series in 2018 did come over as being a new and different thing in a way it hadn't since 2005 (or even earlier). It did not manage to sustain the energy for the finale of the year, though, which was crying out for some Daleks to turn up (they were held back for the festive special instead). There are some great stories in between, though, and a few new or updated monster designs from the era as a whole - the P'ting, the Kerblam robots, the updated Sea Devils, and the Cyber-Masters - may well endure, in the memory and perhaps even in the future of the show. More importantly, some more diverse historical settings were explored, mirroring the increased diversity of writers and directors working behind the scenes.

After Chibnall's first season, the old elements came flooding back, and some of the best treatment of these elements in the history of the show resulted. Resolution finds a genuinely new and interesting angle on oldest Doctor Who adversaries the Daleks; Flux contains the best use of Sontarans to date, and the series again found the perfect person of the moment to play the Master. The most controversial treatment of old elements, of course, regards Sacha Dhawan's Master plus the Time Lords and the Doctor herself: the Timeless Child arc. The Ghost Monument's teasing reference shows that this was always Chibnall's plan, and it is certainly worthy of the phrase 'game-changing' in a way few previous twists in the show have been. Obviously, it made a lot of people annoyed (including my son - see above), but it doesn't bother me. For more details of my feelings about it, and how some of the continuity errors that agitate can be explained away, see the Deeper Thoughts section of the Mummy on the Orient Express post from shortly after the big revelatory episodes in 2020. Whatever anyone thinks of the implications of the arc, I think they would have to concede that it was an impressive feat to find such a substantial and more or less backwards-compatible new story to tell within a mythology that had grown over 55 years of official and unofficial material. As well as the big and audacious, the show also had successes with the smaller and intimate; probably destined to be most remembered is the Doctor's relationship with Yaz, the first significant same-sex crush depicted in the series, albeit depicted quite tentatively. More could have been made of the emotional goodbye at the end of The Power of the Doctor, but images like Yaz carrying the injured Doctor, or later taking up a place in a support group of those who've had their lives changed by the Doctor over the years, were very strong and will stay with people.

The final image of this era is indelible too, the Doctor regenerating atop Durdle Door. It was planned when the future of Doctor Who was uncertain, Chibnall was not aware of any new showrunner taking over from him at the time, and so it could have been the final image of the show (at least for a while). As the programme has got a new (old) showrunner in Russell T. Davies, the show goes on as it must. It's likely that the next era will not develop any of the new lore set up in Chibnall's period, but it could happen. Don't write off the era completely: Gallifrey could very well stay destroyed, Dhawan or Martin could come back, as could Whittaker herself. Maybe even a P'ting could pop up now and again: time will tell, as it always does.

In Summary:

Really very good, and unfairly overlooked.