💾 Archived View for tlalice.flounder.online › thoughts › doctorwhoseries14.gmi captured on 2024-08-18 at 17:07:09. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
i watched all of these episodes around the time they came out and haven't really rewatched them since them since im not that into rewatching stuff so i may be misremembering some stuff but i don't think i am
absurdly silly but still pretty fun dw adventure. the whole super smart babies thing does get a bit too annoying at times and i really feel like the line about it "being illegal to turn off the baby machine" feels like a leftover from an earlier version of the story where it was maybe more focused on an abortion metaphor and probably more serious? and the big solution at the end being a literal fart joke was maybe a bit too far in the silliness even for me who actually likes it when dw goes silly.
the Maestro is a fun villain, really rising up dw's camp factor to the max. i really feel like having this episode so soon after The Giggle was a bad idea? like bringing back one of the big classic villains in a "oh no the earth is being destroyed" special and then 3 episodes later having the new big villain reveal be the toymaker's child in a "oh no the earth is being destroyed" special feels a bit bad in a way. i also recall this episode being kinda hyped up as "the beatles episode" so having the beatles be relevant to just the start and end of it was disappointing. the chases and battles with the maestro were pretty fun and im not sure of how controversial an opinion this is but the musical number at the end was actually really fun too
this is the one i was most curious about from when the episodes were being announced, being Moffat's big return and all. i really liked this one. Ncuti is just really good and 15 is fun to watch even when he spends the entire episode just standing still on top of a mine. Ruby is also really fun in this one. the whole big metaphor about wars for profits is headed in the right direction but kinda misses the mark with the whole "this whole planet was uninhabited and there were never any enemy combatants" thing to me, it almost feels like it is ignoring the existence of victims in the real wars this one was a metaphor for for the sake of making a point. maybe Moffat was aware of that and just thought that a "oh the characters that we are meant to actually like were tricked into a genocidal war against the planet's native inhabitants" twist would be too much for the episode but it still feels really off imo.
my favourite of the season! from the little i've seen online (i have generally stopped interacting with fandoms of things i like recently so i'm not very aware of current fandom feelings and receptions at all) the reception to this one looks divisive and it feels like whether or not you like it really depends on whether or not you personally understand the feeling and fears it is going for. the political angle feels maybe a bit tacked on for the sake of having a "ruby saves the world from nuclear war" moment and im really mixed on the implied sexual abuse that Ruby was aware of but unable to do anything about. it might be actually be a bit too much for just a side-character thing in one of the story arcs of the episode. but the way it explores this kind of fear/paranoia of being abandoned by everyone you care about really makes this one hit really well as a psychological horror episode for me and makes it my favourite of the season
this one really really surprised me. when i first started watching the episode and noticed it was a "phone bad" story i kinda started tuning out and thought i'd really dislike it. when Lindy blocked 15 but then kept listening to Ruby i thought it was weird, and then some minutes later when she commented on that by saying she didn't realize 15 was the person she blocked and she just thought they "looked the same" i just had a quick "hey that's racist" thought before thinking back about the entire episode that far and realising that "wait it's really fucking weird that every single person in this futuristic paradise utopia is white" and noticing what the story was actually going for and that it was less about "father i cannot app the book" and more about the way social media enables the creation of racist eco-chambers and etc.... Ncuti's perfomance in the final scene really ties the whole episode together and to me really establishes 15 as probably the most empathetic and kind doctor in the series.
i generally really dislike doctor romance plots but this one really sold me on it. 15 and Rogue have such an amazing chemistry. im not a big fan of the main plot happening. i didn't really like the chuldur (i have no idea if the "we're going to cosplay this planet to death" is really stupid on purpose or just by accident? i really like it due to how stupid it is tho) and the "ruby defeats the chuldur and manages to trick everyone into thinking she is one of them" part to me felt like it made very little sense and the conclusion where Rogue takes Ruby's place in the trap was very "wait that was a thing that could happen at all?", but the Doctor and Rogue relationship really carried the episode for me and made me really enjoy it, the dance scene in particular was great.
i have very mixed thoughts on this finale. all of the foreshadowing for Susan that the season had done up to that point being just a misdirection is maybe a bit frustrating. i imagine that for new fans especially having the whole season hint at this one big important character only to in the end have all those hints be for nothing and have the reveal be about another big important character they haven't heard of and wasn't foreshadowed at all (that one scene in the devils chord was just a callback to the episode that sutekh happens to be from, so it definitely doesn't count in foreshadowing afaic, especially for the new fans that don't know that that scene is a callback to that episode already), Gabriel Woolf voicing sutekh again is really fun to watch. the main plot in Legend doesn't really exist much since it's all just setup for Empire, and in Empire it is kinda just too wander-y and unfocused, and the way they defeat sutekh in the end was pretty out of nowhere and unsatisfying. Empire also really focuses on the empathetic and kind characterization for 15 which i really liked.
as for the twist/lack of regarding Ruby, im definitely more positive on it than most people from what i can tell. from the start of Ruby's arc i was really scared of whatever the twist they were planning was going to be because "special person has special genes from special biological parent" is a trope that i find really boring and bad, so i was actively hoping that the reveal was going to be that her mom was just some random woman out there, which did end up happening. but yeah, on retrospect the subversion of that trope does make all of the focus on that arc and Ruby's magical snow thing feel really pointless and unworthy of the time they were given.
i really liked this season. it's definitely not as put together as [insert whatever era of the show is the current fandom darling here], but it did at least take some risks and had some really fun stories and moments