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| By: | Jared Star, Portsmouth, United States |
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| Date: | Wednesday 27 October 2021 |
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| Rating: |   2 |
Here we are promised to have a sprawling, earth-shaking epic, but most of the run-time has the companions and the Doctor being stuck in the TARDIS, while Ryan berates his father.
The tone was all over the place. From boring soap opera to boring “sci-fi.” It did, however, have an excellent beginning. The Dalek loose in the sewer was creepy and well implemented, and the idea of it taking over human bodies was genius. I seriously loved that bit, and wanted that to be the whole episode. Sadly, that’s not the case. What does happen instead is the Dalek leaves the sewers and tries to rebuild its casing on an earth junkyard. This sends us into a boring new plot.
I literally laughed out loud when the junkyard Dalek was on screen because it looks stupid. Also, I want to point out that there is no way that a Dalek could build a new, fully functioning, missile-loaded battle tank in less than an hour in an abandoned shed. Plus, I think it’s absurd that it was blown up by a bomb fashioned out of a microwave at the end. It is so tacky and last minute.
This episode was also played for laughs most of the time but in a very forced manner. Specifically, the one-liner told about drunk people on New Year. I also hated how the show completely got rid of UNIT in the stupidest joke possible. The entirety of series 11 tries too hard to be too new and “relatable.” Most of the damage this series has done is irreparable. UNIT cannot come back now (or at least it can’t in a way that doesn’t feel like “Uh oh, we screwed up. Put them back in, put them back in the show!”)
Honestly, there is so much wrong with this and series 11 as a whole, I cannot describe it all here. So, I will instead talk about what could have made this episode good: Having everyone stay in the sewer and split up. One by one everyone is taken over by the Dalek as it tries to learn more about the Doctor. Making this a slow-burning horror story would have been the best way to go, especially since that is how it starts (only for it to take a hard shift in tone that lasts the rest of this snooze-fest).
So to sum up, stupid overpowered Dalek that’s blown up by a microwave, and people on New Year having their WiFi shut down for a little while as the high stakes...
At least it looks pretty.
