The Sontarans first appeared in the 1973 Jon Pertwee story The Time Warrior. After all, during the RTD years we met the cat people of New New York, the rhino people known as the Judoon, and the Daleks went through that strange phase of turning their workers in “old” New York into pig people. It isn’t a surprise that the Doctor Who universe has an alien species of dog people. The Nitro-9 that the Doctor mentioned in the opening sequence was a type of explosive developed and carried by seventh Doctor companion Ace in the late 80s. The David Tennant-led animation Dreamland was broadcast in six short parts in 2009 on the BBC’s Red Button service and website.
#Doctor who season 1 episode 2 the end of the world series
Shada should have been a six-parter the following year, but industrial action halted production, dooming the story to an endless loop of being almost definitively completed via a whole series of almost definitive remakes (there’s another one out on Blu-Ray later this year). Photograph: James Pardon/BBC Studios Deeper into the vortexįlux is the first six-part live action Doctor Who story to reach BBC One screens since Tom Baker’s The Armageddon Factor was transmitted in 1979. She also seemed to already know exactly what a Weeping Angel was. It’s just that she doesn’t know that.Īnd I can’t be the only person whose ears pricked up when Annabel Scholey’s mysterious character Claire said that she had come “the long way round”, a phrase associated in the show with the Doctor’s own journey and the search for Gallifrey. We also know that the Doctor and Swarm are old enemies. We now know that Karvanista worked for the Division – the mysterious Time Lord organisation that the Doctor may have worked for before their mind was wiped and they were turned into the William Hartnell “First” Doctor that we know and love.
And there was some of that in chapter one.
Jodie Whittaker and executive producer Matt Strevens have hinted strongly that we will get some sort of resolution – or at least further exploration – of the Timeless Child storyline. The tiny bit of dialogue between them in chapter one suggested to me that their days as comic relief may not be over, however. The redesign of the Sontarans saw them go back to their original 70s look, and caused speculation that they would once again be a mighty warrior race, rather than the butt of a lot of jokes. There wasn’t much more to his character than having weird alien stuff happen to him, and responding with sardonic comments. She was not shy about challenging the Doctor about the Time Lord keeping secrets, and confident enough with alien tech to get Dan out of his booby-trapped cage.Īs for Dan, I didn’t dislike him, but didn’t particularly warm to him either.
Yasmin has clearly toughened up a bit since the end of the last episode. Seven billion dogs save planet Earth from being destroyed by the Flux, while loads of the Doctor’s old enemies knock about in the background.
It felt like quite a slight story about Karvanista, interspersed with what could have been the cold openers for five or six other episodes. But, despite the title, the show didn’t lean into Halloween much at all.ĭid the episode work to set up the series and as a standalone story? The jury is out. I have long clamoured for a Doctor Who Halloween special that did for the imagery of Halloween what the early Christmas specials did for the festive season, with their robot Santas and killer Christmas trees. The episode was big on introducing characters and setting up a disparate set of situations – via some gorgeous CGI of outer space and planetary destruction – but didn’t have much of a story to tell. Then we found out that this season would be an interlinked six-parter (a surprise), both Jodie Whittaker (not a surprise) and Chris Chibnall (quite a surprise) were leaving, Russell T Davies would be coming back as showrunner (a jaw-dropper) in a co-production deal between the BBC and Bad Wolf (a new twist), and apparently Sony is trying to purchase Bad Wolf (omg what now?).Īn emotional roller-coaster for sure, and that’s without taking into account that when we last saw the Tardis fam, Ryan (Tosin Cole) and Graham (Bradley Walsh) were back on top of that Yorkshire hill – Ryan trying to ride his bike – having left a rather maudlin Yasmin (Mandip Gill) to carry on travelling alone with the 13th Doctor (Whittaker).Īnd so on to a new series and an opener, the Halloween Apocalypse, which wasted absolutely no time in introducing us to Dan (John Bishop). R egular readers may recall that over the summer I went rogue and suggested that if the BBC couldn’t deliver a radically revamped template for Doctor Who for the 2020s, it would be better off canning it.
0 kommentar(er)
