science-fiction – JG Judgementally Comments…

Doctor Who Season 15/2 Episode Eight, “The Reality War”

So the second Gatwa season bows out but does the last episode stick the landing?

Maybe the point of all this is up there?

What’s The Episode? The Reality War

What’s It All About, JG? Wondering if RTD has ever seen Doctor Who before, strangely. Anyway, following on from last week, the Doctor escapes the falling balcony because Anita from “Joy To The World” opens a Time Hotel door which he can then step through. The Time Hotel doors allow actual reality to start breaking through, so UNIT becomes UNIT again.

Doctor Who Season 15/2 Episode Six, “The Interstellar Song Contest”

Is this what it’s come to?

What’s The Episode? The Intergalactic Song Contest

What’s It All About, JG? Eurovision in space, innit? But fine, the Doctor and Belinda turn up at the Intergalactic Song Contest, shit happens and most of it is really, really terrible (the writing, not the events, though also that). Susan pops in for a cameo (the only bit I actively enjoyed) and Mrs Flood is the Rani. Woo. The end.

Doctor Who Season 15/2 Episode Five, “The Story and The Engine”

What is the Story of Doctor Who anyway?

What’s the Episode? The Story and The Engine

What’s It All About, JG? The Doctor lands in Nigeria so he can go hang out in a barber shop with his friend Omo (Sule Rimi), leaving Belinda to cool her heels in the TARDIS. The barber shop has, however, been taken over by The Barber, who has abducted Omo and a few others. The barber, alongside a woman called Abby (Michelle Asante), is using them to power a mysterious engine with the power of stories which the abducted men are compelled to tell. Trying to leave the shop, the Doctor discovers it is both in Nigeria and on the back of a giant spider simultaneously. Fed up of not being in the episode, Belinda eventually arrives and gets caught too.

The Barber reveals he is a storyteller who spread stories of the Gods but received no credit so now wants revenge. The Doctor also figures out that Abby is in fact Abena, someone he met (and abandoned) when he was the Fugitive Doctor – she’s also looking for revenge. The Barber wants to reach the centre of the spider’s web to cut off the gods from the web and killing them, which the Doctor things will destabilise all human culture (or something). Abenda changes her mind on the revenge thing and – via braiding – gives the Doctor a map to the engine’s power source. The Doctor links the engine to his story which overloads it, the Barber is persuaded to let everyone go free, and everyone escapes. Omo retires, the Barber gets the (now normal) shop and Abby goes and gets on with her life.

Doctor Who Season 15/2 Episode 3, “The Well”

Can third time be lucky for this season?

What’s The Episode? “The Well”

What’s It All About, JG? The Doctor and Belinda land on a spaceship to get further readings from the Vindicator to try and get them back to Earth. They are unceremoniously dumped on a planet where a military rescue team – straight out of Aliens – are trying to find out what happened to a mining colony. Entering with the soldiers, the Doctor discovers just one survivor, a deaf cook named Aliss. She has “something on her back”, which turns out to be the creature from “Midnight”, still around some 400,000 years later and this is that selfsame planet, now stripped of its diamond. The Doctor is able to force the creature out of Aliss but it attaches itself to Belinda instead. Thanks to some fancy shooting from the leader of the soldiers, Shaya (Caoilfhionn Dunne) Belinda is freed and they return to the drop ship where the TARDIS is and go on their merry way. Only for a post-departure scene where Mrs Bloody Flood turns up again and also it looks like the creature escaped.

Doctor Who Season 15/2 Episode 2,”Lux”

The first episode wasn’t great but can “Lux” be the light at the end of the tunnel?

What’s The Episode? “Lux”

What’s It All About, JG? The Doctor and Belinda arrive in 1950s Florida, where people have gone missing at the local cinema. They investigate and discover that the projectionist, Reginald Pye (Linus Roache) is still inside, playing movies to an empty theatre. Inside the theatre, they are terrorised (allegedly) by Mr Ring-a-Ding (Alan Cumming), an old-timey cartoon who is actually Lux Imperator, the god of Light. After faffing about in an animated section and a metatexual section, they escape back into the real work. They manage to defeat Lux by having Reginald Pye use a bunch of celluloid to blow a hole in the back of the cinema, let in lots of sunlight, and then Mr Ring-a-Ding just sort of drifts away (rather like the point of this episode) and the missing people are all restored.

Doctor Who Season 15/2 Episode 1, “The Robot Revolution”

Ncuti Gatwa’s back for a second season of the fifteenth Doctor. But can Season 2 manage a better start than his first one?

What’s the Episode? “The Robot Revolution”, the first episode of Season 2 (let’s not get into the whole numbering thing again).

What’s It All About, JG? The episode starts with Belinda Chandra (Varada Sethu) getting a star certificate from her awkward boyfriend Alan (Jonny Green) before cutting forward 17 years, where she’s a nurse working in a hospital and living in shared accommodation with other twenty-somethings. A robot turns up and abducts her, just as the Doctor arrives to try and prevent said abduction (and Mrs Flood does a bit more fourth-wall breaking). She’s taken to the planet MsBelindaChandra, the one that Alan named after her, to be made queen and marry the AI generator. The Doctor turns up to try and save her, cry, and generally put things right. The robots on this planet rebelled against the population for what seemed to be no reason. The AI generator actually turns out to be Al (as in Alan), her old boyfriend, who has been wired into the planet’s system and was responsible for said robot revolution via some timey-wimey shenanigans and time slippage. He’s stopped by touching two versions of the star certificate from different times which reduces him to a single egg and sperm. Trying to take Belinda back home, because she does not want to be there, the Doctor discovers the TARDIS bounces off 25th May 2025 and so they need to go the long way round.

Doctor Who Christmas Special – “Joy To The World”

Christmas Specials are back! But is there anything actually special about it?

What’s The Episode? The Christmas 2024 special, “Joy To The World”.

What’s It All About, JG? The Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) arrives at a Time Hotel where a briefcase with ideas above its station is possessing then killing the wearer as it upgrades it access. He nips into one of the rooms in the Time Hotel which leads to a 21^st century Earth hotel room and Joy (Nicola Coughlan), who’s alone on Christmas. In attempting to rescue her, he gets stuck on Earth for a year living a normal life with unflappable hotel owner Anita (Steph de Whalley). Once the plot resumes, he discovers that the suitcase houses a star seed from Big Evil Arms Corp Villengard. The plan is to use the Time Hotel to detonate it in the past, give it time to grown, and sell it as an unlimited power source. The Doctor stops this – well, Joy does really, by allowing herself to take the star seed into her, be killed, also somehow save the other people we’ve seen the briefcase kill and her Mum as well, who died in hospital (implicitly of Covid but certainly during the time of Covid at least). And the star’s detonation happened over Bethlehem in the year 0001, in what we are assured is a “twist”.