Doctor Who: Resolution

Well, that was terrible. Forget the fact that they called the monster a Dalek - because that word clearly has no meaning any more - this was just a badly written story. The B plot about Ryan's father was actually quite good, but it didn't have anything to do with the rest of the episode and seemed to just be there to fill time.

Doctor Who: The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos

Another absolute nothing of an episode. I guess they were sort of trying to make mystery out of it but it was just terribly contrived and resolved in a completely meaningless way. I think we're also supposed to care about Tim Shaw from Demtel episode one coming back, but, uh, why? He was basically the platonic ideal of "generic villain". The thing with him collecting a tooth from each of of his victims sounds like an interesting hook, but it's not actually relevant to anything and it ends up making him look pretty dumb a lot of the time.

Doctor Who: It Takes You Away

This episode is just a mess. There are several directions it could have gone in, but instead it's just a bunch of random shit thrown together for no reason. There's sort of a mystery, but the solution is just some meaningless technobabble. There's sort of an adventure, but the characters just sort of wander through it without ever facing any real adversity. There's obviously supposed to be some emotional impact, but it's incredibly forced and artificial so it doesn't work at all. Nothing works in this episode.

Doctor Who: The Witchfinders

This episode couldn't have annoyed me more if it had been intentional. The cast is great and the monsters look really cool, but the story is garbage. Nothing makes sense, the dialogue is incredibly annoying, and even the bits that could have worked don't because they take full advantage of every lazy shortcut instead of bothering to come up with plausible reasons for anything to happen.

Doctor Who: Kerblam!

This was a decent episode. There are a couple of things about it that I found very irritating, but mostly it was good. For a kids' show, anyway. The "twists" (such as they are) aren't going to surprise any adult viewers, but I doubt the target audience found it quite so easy to predict. My only major criticism is that it seemed like it was heading toward a particular message only to back off at the last moment, which made the point of the episode a little unclear.

Doctor Who: Demons of the Punjab

In some ways, this episode wasn't as bad as the last one, mostly because it was just kind of boring. And the aliens were completely pointless. If you cut them out of the story it would be exactly the same, you'd just save some time.

Doctor Who: The Tsuranga Conundrum

This episode was about 50% mediocre and 50% bad. In fact, if not for the bad bits, it would be utterly generic and forgettable, so basically the only things I'm going to remember about it are bad and if I remember it at all it will be as a bad episode. So actually it's bad episode. I didn't like it.

Doctor Who: Arachnids in the UK

Not a fan of this one. Kind of the opposite of last week's, in that I think the concept is good but the execution was bad. It's basically a Captain Planet episode, except that they forgot to make the bad guy actually bad. Don't get me wrong, he's a complete arsehole, but he's not actually wrong. About anything.

Doctor Who: Rosa

I liked the execution of this episode, I thought it was really well done. But I hate the underlying concept. The idea that the course of history is determined by the actions of particular "great men" (or, as in this case, women) is just dumb. If you're talking about events on a personal scale, "don't change the past" is a great rule, because something as unlikely as the existence of a specific individual would be really easy to affect. But if Rosa Parks hadn't been on that specific bus on that specific day then the whole American civil rights movement would have been derailed? Come on. I'm not buying it.

Doctor Who: The Ghost Monument

Like I said last time, this episode was better than the first one. I kind of hoped they weren't going to find the TARDIS so quickly, because a few episodes of them hitching rides to various places, following its trail, could have been pretty entertaining and would have been a good excuse for the new crew to stick around. A better excuse than "you know how sometimes the Doctor can't pilot the TARDIS accurately? Yeah, that."

Doctor Who: The Woman Who Fell to Earth

I haven't watched Doctor Who since, like, 2011 or something, but with a new head writer I thought it might not be so shit any more. At this point I've watched the first three episodes, and so far it's been mostly OK. Not great, not terrible. I've pretty much decided I'm going to watch the whole season, at least.

The Wedding of River Song

God, what a tedious episode. It just drags on and on with nothing happening until right near the end when it all suddenly comes together in a way that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

Closing Time

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH! MAKE IT STOP! WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME, TELEVISION? WHY ARE YOU MAKING ME SUFFER LIKE THIS? WHAT HAVE I EVER DONE TO YOU? WHY!? WHY!? WHY!?

This is the worst thing ever. This is an abomination. I actually had to fast-forward parts of this episode to avoid being compelled to tear my own eyeballs out and puncture my eardrums. That stupid fat fuck from The Lodger is back and is even worse than last time. WHY!?

Bring back Amy, bring back Rose, bring back River Song, I don't care, just don't make me watch this dickhead any more!

The God Complex

You are entering the vicinity of an area adjacent to a location. The kind of place where there might be a monster, or some kind of weird mirror. These are just examples; it could also be something much better. Prepare to enter: The Scary Door.

Doctor Who: The Girl Who Waited

Last week's episode was disappointingly inoffensive, but fortunately this week they're back on top form, by which I mean that this episode was absolute shit from start to finish.

Doctor Who: Night Terrors

Another episode that really doesn't manage to make much impact at all. Don't get me wrong, it was stupid and didn't really make any sense and wasn't as scary/creep as it was obviously supposed to be, but mostly it was just tedious. There was never any real sense of danger and I just never got even slightly interested in what the monster was going to turn out to be, which was good, because the answer was stupid.

Doctor Who: Let's Kill Hitler

Doctor Who is back on, so I guess I'd better start writing some reviews. I'd managed to forget in the intervening time that this episode is called Let's Kill Hitler, and remembering that just made me sad. At least it sets expectations for the episode incredibly low, so I should be less disappointed than normal.

A Good Man Goes to War

God, where to even begin with this massive pile of bullshit they've served up to us in place of a plot this week? I guess technically a lot of stuff happens, but honestly, it's 90% filler. You could cut this episode down to about five minutes and it would be more entertaining, less confusing and a whole lot easier to watch.

The Almost People

Part two of last week's episode, and again the plot barely exists, so I'll just mention a few things as they occur to me rather than going through the plot point by point.

The Rebel Flesh

Rather than the usual plot synopsis with commentary I normally do, I thought I'd try something different this time, since there really wasn't much plot to summarise.