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#idk what influence Chibnall had over that episode
raspberry-gloaming · 1 month
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What I really don't understand is people hating on Chris Chibnall specifically due to certain episodes that *he didn't even write.* Like yes, he's the showrunner, he has power and is part of the decision making and choices, but a lot of these comments that I see against certain episodes, mainly Orphan 55 and Kerblam!, paint him as the writer, the villain who ruined the doctor by writing this story and these politics. He wrote this story. He did this.
But like, them - those two most hated stories (from what I've seen on Tumblr), especially Kerblam! from a political perspective - he wasn't the writer. A quick google search will tell you that
Kerblam? Pete McTighge
Orphan 55? Ed Hime
Before anyone comes for me, I'm not claiming that Chibnall is perfect by any means or absolving him of any responsibility to do with these episodes. I know Tumblr's media literacy can be... eh. I don't particularly like these specific episodes, although I do like 13's run overall, not my favourite, don't like everything in it, but who does for any monolith in dw. DW really is a mixed bag. I honestly really enjoy watching some of the episodes, they're such a vibe. 13 is in my top 4 doctors! (7, 11, 12 and 13 in no particular order)
Every series has some shitty episodes. Some are written by the showrunner, some aren't. But it's kinda weird to paint the showrunner as some kind of villain for these episodes especially.
So yeah! make valid criticisms, but also remember to like check who actually wrote it before flaming.
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dangerliesbeforeyou · 13 days
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ok some more thoughts on the eps (under read more cos of potential spoilers lol)
starting with the slightly more negative stuff so i can end with the things i like lol
there was a lot of over explaining of some basic who things, which i didnt mind that much considering they were being told to ruby, but but it did definitely feel like 'rtd is trying to introduce this to a new audience so he's kinda spoon feeding them everything' which is a lil frustrating as a long time fan lol...
on a similar note some of the flashback things in space babies were completely unnecessary given they were from the literal same episode pfft... like at least in the 2nd one they used flashbacks as voice overs which worked a lil better, but i'd still rather they just relied on the audience to understand the call backs without having to SHOW them u know?
the cgi babies mouths were weird, i didnt like them... i also wasnt the biggest fan of the music notes as tentacle like things coming from maestro... surprised i havent seen anyone complain about this given how vocal some of y'all were about the use of cgi in chibnall's era....... hmm
speaking of, i think some of the pacing issues in chibnall's era have stuck around a bit because that 2nd episode esp started off really well but then fizzled out in the middle, and the resolution went on for waaaay too long lol (also after maestro said that in ordered to defeat them they needed a musical genius, i kinda assumed the doctor and ruby would turn to eachother like 'hmm who could we go to who's a musical genius in 1963...' and then it cuts to john and paul wondering around the studio or smth... like idk there wasnt much connecting tissue between the sections, it just hung around on the kinda boring 'music battle' between the doctor and maestro... and like i get theyre trying to make ncuti's doctor more of an action-y style hero, but that felt too much like the battle with the toymaker.... also yes maybe i'm also mad there werent more scenes with the beatles in them SUE me lol! like literally most other episode (think of the van gogh one) the feature figures from history, theyre the main focus of the episode so it kinda sucked they were barely there :///////)
the musical number at the end of that ep wasnt my fav i'll be honest.... like it was fine, but in the xmas ep it made sense to have a fun musical number and it worked with the rest of the ep, but this one just felt like 'well the story's over ... but we still have 5 minutes left to fill so random song and dance number!'
final thing that i didnt love was (and bear in mind i know nothing about filmmaking lol) that some of the shots and edits felt a bit off? or didnt feel like they worked in a scene or just could have done with a retake from a different angle ... like especially some of the maestro scenes, like the performance was so good but the camera didnt seem to really be working with them very well? and in general some of the conversation scenes had the vibe of what you see in theatre lol? like where characters talk to each other via looking out at the audience lol... and like i dont mind that kinda theatrical way of producing scenes usually, but in moments when it's an intimate conversation between two characters, it did feel a tad weird lol...
edit: another thing i didnt mention but i did recently see a post talking about this, but i did think it was odd that most of the beatles ep is set in the 60s but it doesnt actually discuss the doctor being a black man in what was a very tough time to be non-white lol... like not only does the beatles music directly come FROM being influenced by black artists in america (smth they even discussed lol), but a part of the episode is about how important music is to humanity, and nothing shows that more than the way music the african slaves' sang whilst on plantations was adapted into blues/jazz and then later into rock n roll/pop... like music was an act of keeping a part of their humanity alive when they were being brutally dehumanised... (and like in part i get why rtd didn't go into this, as he hasn't the best history of dealing with black characters... but it WAS a notable absence and does kinda tell me the doctor being black isnt going to play into anything, which sucks, since chibnall did at least make it so the doctor being a woman DID massively alter the way she was seen... i might make another post about this lol)
ok things i liked!
nan-e was seriously great (cant remember what the actress is called but she does such a great job!!!! in a way i'd love for her to show up again she's such a fab character lol)
the whole resolution of the space babies ep was really great tbh! also the reveal the bogeyman is actually made of bogeys was legit really funny lol! even the fart at the end like yeh it's childish but who doesnt love a fart joke lol?
ncuti is great at acting all suave and confident one minute only to be on the verge of breaking down the next, aka the literal epitome of the doctor lol! also love his relationship w/ ruby ofc
ruby was great too! tho atm idk if we've really gotten a true grasp of who she is as a character u know? atm it does feel a lil like the whole clara mystery thing where her character comes 2nd, but i'm sure as the series goes along we're gonna get more lol
loved that cilla black was in the devil's chord ep!! that's it tbh just loved that
also loved that the doctor mentioned his family this early on, specifically susan! i do kinda wish they had used a flashback sequence when he was talking about the genocide cos i kept thinking 'wait... is this the time war or is this what happened w/ the master at the end of the (???cant remember the number.... 12th?) series??' which was several years ago and would have been great to refresh our memories on.. also meant we could potentially have seen jodie again lol!
i saw someone on .... somewhere complain about the 4th wall breaking but i actually really liked it lol! especially the non-diegetic comment! idk if i want every episode to have that, but i enjoyed it in that one! one thing about rtd's first era that i appreciate is that he experimented a lot with the format of each episode... which meant we got things like love & monsters, which like,yeh, it's..... An Episode for sure, but i appreciate that it's told from a different perspective! so in a way it feels like he's doing that kinda thing again, where each episode feels connected but still distinct from one another, if that makes any sense??
i liked the fake beatles song about the dog lol... partly because it didnt even sound that far off of something they wouldve written on a later album (by paul) pfft... kinda sucks they didnt buy the rights to at least one actual beatles song, even just to play a few secs of it lol...
overall, neither episode blew me away, but they weren't terrible either lol... i'm also shocked how similar this series is to chibnall's era, which is why it's so bizarre to me that people continue to be like 'oh doctor who is finally back!' like bitch for one it never went away lol!??! and for two, a lot of issues people had with chibnall's (and to some extent moffat's) era are still there, but now cos it's headed by rtd again people arent complaining about them the same way they did before... idkkkkk
i've also already talked about this, but i do still think the releasing at midnight thing is fucking dumb, especially for us british fans! i get that maybe that's a stipulation from disney but it doesnt mean i have to like it... also didnt like that 2 episodes were released at once like ???? why lol idkk
i'm still looking forward to the rest of the series ofc!
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