It seems Doctor Who has a conflict of interest, it doesn’t know whether to pander to its old viewers with rose tinted nostalgia or to try and shove exposition down the throats of its new watchers.

In this episode we had the Doctor fighting off the Daleks with her usual companions plus Jack Harkness. But first she is in a jail which she went to at the end of the last season, and in this jail we get to see lots of old characters that, if you hadn’t seen the series’ before you would not understand their significance. These included The Weeping Angels, The Silence and that tiny weird goblin thing from earlier seasons.

I have said this many, many times before but it still stands strong – this show puts too much emphasis into talking! All the characters do is talk and it is so tedious and annoying, I wish that they could find new and exciting ways to show exposition and keep the story moving along rather than characters asking ‘what, who, why, when’ every two seconds to the Doctor. It just makes no sense to me and seems so dumb and ineffective.

I love Jodie Whitaker. I love Doctor Who and so I can see big potential for this show. When the Daleks were coming down onto Earth from their ship it was really fun and brought back the excitement that younger me would’ve had in David Tennant days. However the issue with this show is the writing, the writing completely brings it down and makes it so tedious and childish. Where things could be left to your imagination to make it darker or more exciting the exposition of the writing doesn’t allow that to happen, it just completely ruins any tension from the show.

I have to say one of my favourite parts about this episode was Captain Jack. He was as usual a delight to behold and so fun and just seemed to fall back into his role perfectly, but that’s all I can really say that was good. Unfortunately this episode just did not inspire me or excite me and being over an hour long it just went on for too long. There’s a lot of talk at the moment about Jodie Whitaker possibly quitting the show and, to be honest, I’m not surprised if this is the route that they’re going to go down.

Doctor Who needs to have a reality check. It needs to look at itself and think: what is the purpose of the show? Who is the target audience? Who are we aiming the show at? Because if it’s children like the Sarah Jane adventures then it’s clearly no longer for me, but if it’s still going to show people being shot and killed with their skeletons showing (which is clearly for adults and not for young children) then why doesn’t the script resonate with that? Why is the script so childish whereas the visuals are so adult? It’s such a mix match and it makes it really hard to watch and enjoy.

I have been saying this for a while so I don’t think it will happen but I really do wish they got some better producers on this show, some better writers, some better directors, just to make it what it could be. It has so much potential, we’ve seen that from previous seasons, and it’s such a shame that it’s gone down this road. Give me something fresh, new, and exciting or make it a show for kids. You can’t have both and either you have to to target people who understand the show and all the little Easter eggs and want the fun mixed with the horror or you have to tell those people this is a kids show now and let them move on to more adult things. How about bringing back Torchwood?

Let me know what you thought of this episode but for me, I’m waiting to see what will happen with Jodie, but this might be a show that I just have grown out of and it’s such a shame to say that.

Until next time.

Published by shonaharding

Media graduate with a passion for reviewing film and TV. View all posts by shonaharding