2019 New Year's Day Special: Resolution

Comment on the 2019 New Year's Day Special

Really good episode. Probably the best Dalek episode since the Tenannt era. (Witch's Familiar is basically a very good Davros story with some utterly terrible Dr. Who and the Daleks level Daleks. Into the Dalek is kinda okay.)

Family stuff was pretty good. It didn't feel so divorced from the plot, I actually feel like it helped balance out a somewhat by the numbers episode. TARDIS did get too crowded today, and it really only hurt Yas. Who, I hate to admit, just seems increasingly superfluous. I feel like, as small Universe-y as it would have been, it should have been Yas who knew Mitch who then gets taken over to give the Doctor some proper drama. The guardians plot felt a little over engineered. Could have been streamlined.

The music was much better this time out.

Briggs did a great job, really stretching his very fine acting muscles on the Daleks for the first time in a long time. I did enjoy the "everyone is hungover and everything is closed" runner which clearly seems like the reasoning Chibnall used to move the special.

Jodie was excellent in this outing. I enjoyed the "I'm nice, here's one last final, final, final chance." and then her "You all heard that right?" bit? Loved it. SO good. She's been the Doctor for a while. But I do feel her against the Dalek definitely settles the argument. Graham, as always, is the secret joy of the episode. Ryan was great. His father was really good, too.

Loved it. More of this Chibnall, please.

Sorry, but that was just a very subpar episode.  The intent of the family stuff was fine, but it was obvious that the Dad's microwave was going to save the day.  And rather than take a whole series for Ryan and Graham to come to an understanding, it appeared clear that Ryan and his father were going to work things out in a single episode.  It was too much crammed into the B plot for a single story.

And then there is the main A plot.  "Witch's Familiar" is a horrible cringe-inducing mess.  The Doctor takes Davros' chair for a fun ride, the Doctor uses his new super powers to let Davros see again, and it's all fairly obvious that its not genuine and the Doctor is tricked into regenerating the contents of the Skaro sewers to make a giant Poo Monster that swallows the city.  

For "Resolution" we get a new Dalek super-power.  You can cut them up into 1/3 and scatter them around the planet for a thousand years.  Not only won't that kill the Dalek, but the pieces can now teleport themselves across the planet and instantly reform.  Why even bother with the three guardians? The idea of a Dalek taking a human prisoner and trying to take over the planet was fine.  The fact that there is a well known lab housing alien weapons and only a teenage security guard on duty is ridiculous.  And it seems that UNIT is temporarily closed because international partners are being difficult (ie: trump).  Why antagonize the Whittaker haters? It seems so easy for the new Doctor to not have UNIT's telephone number or not time enough to call them rather than bring in a jab at current events.  And we end up with a fairly silly looking Dalek with rockets that is built by a research grad in an hour of black-smithy action.

How about this: A Dalek saucer crashes now and the local police pick up the pieces.  Sure, bring in the researchers to uncover a bit that tumbles into their dig.  Dalek takes control, uses the hostage to scavenge pieces from the local police.  The Doctor finds something better to do than invent all kinds of new Tardis scanners which all end up pointless.  Use some legwork to track down the Dalek.  Would call in UNIT, but there isn't time with the mad dash.  Big confrontation at the end and the Dalek can still be sucked into the sun while Ryan learns to start forgiving his father, but the two don't have their happy ending yet.

It was all so predictable. The Dalek was an immortal bottom-kicker and way more powerful before it rebuilt the travel machine. The Doctor was being too nice about giving the Dalek a chance to leave (which is silly because that would allow the Dalek to summon the fleet and destroy Earth). A whole series of kind of average, bland episodes so I may have been expecting too much from this one.

This felt like a retread of “Dalek” except longer & much stupider.

So much tension revolves around the new recon Dalek with convenient extra powers phoning home when a) the Daleks already know about Earth, & b) The Doctor knows that Skarro is (presently) obliterated.

squishy wrote:

The fact that there is a well known lab housing alien weapons and only a teenage security guard on duty is ridiculous.

Knowledge of the Black Archive shouldn't be so commonplace that some random archaeologist knows about it for sure! And even considering the 'current' fate of U.N.I.T., there definitely should have been more than 1 new and incompetent guard blocking 1 simple door.

squishy wrote:

And it seems that UNIT is temporarily closed because international partners are being difficult (ie: trump).

Not Trump - Brexit. Lack of funding from international partners they said.

squishy wrote:

And we end up with a fairly silly looking Dalek with rockets that is built by a research grad in an hour of black-smithy action.

Yea, that came together pretty quickly - again, the new series is a bit rushed and they give up some logic to keep the pace quick which unfortunately removes tension. But, again, there was a throwaway line that it wasn't just the gun, but the Dalek found a lot of parts in the Black Archive, hence the multiple crates it loaded into the back of the car.

I know it's a New Year's 'special', but again, this is another story that would have benefited from a 2-parter. For what it's worth, I enjoyed it as one of the better episodes of the series. Could have been great with a few tweaks - e.g. cut down the Ryan & Dad scene by a minute and add a scene where the Dalek/human goes 'off the map' for a few days while they try to find a way to track it down... and during those 3-4 days, it finds pieces and constructs its new casing.

Presumably the Brexit/Trump not paying his share of the UNIT cost has caused UNIT to be furloughed (a bit of bitter irony for us Americans with the government shutdown on) and they sold off the Black Archive and its contents (including one Time War-era Dalek casing from Day of the Doctor) to private companies. A rather believably stupid action.

Ben C wrote: wrote:

squishy wrote:
And it seems that UNIT is temporarily closed because international partners are being difficult (ie: trump).
Not Trump - Brexit. Lack of funding from international partners they said.

I took the "difficulty with international partners" and funding to reference the past year's trump statements about NATO and the United Nations being a rip-off.  I can see the Brexit/leaving the EU as being another source for the reference.  Did the writer respond to any questions about this on local media?  Aren't all the EU offices in the UK just moving to France once Brexit takes place?  Since UNIT is in theory worldwide, I took the closure as an worldwide suspension since the Doctor wasn't forwarded to the US branch or Geneva.  I've since done some reading on other forums and Brexit does come up as the #1 reference, and then a whole lot of arguing about the wisdom of Brexit.

The building with "the archives" had signs indicating MDZ.  I'd have to go back and re-watch the whole thing, but I got the feeling that MDZ was different than UNIT and their Black Archives.  Still not a good excuse for why it should be so easily burgled.

The writing is what really seems to have been lacking the last few years.  The actors and production values are generally good.  But there haven't been any thoroughly great stories since at least the 2013 celebrations.  I've not bothered to re-watch any Capaldi or Whittaker episodes as none of them are really that memorable.  I've got all of Capaldi on Blu-Ray sitting unopened.  Mostly fair to average with a few stories I've come to dislike. I have been enjoying my Season 19 Blu-Rays.

When the Dalek uses Lyn's computer, the display indicates it's accessing the Black Archive and then it shifts to the MDX website with all the "hacking" fuzz on the screen. MDZ is a weapons research company, which just so happens to have the Dalek parts. The Doctor also makes a flip remark about selling tech to private companies.

I enjoyed this one quite a bit. Feels like a proper finale, with all the Ryan and his dad stuff.

Ewwwwww what a disgusting mess of a show with a pitiful ending. Squishy already mentioned how bad Witch’s Familiar was but this was just as bad without the Daleks and Davros.

Again Jodie did basically NOTHING to save the day other than open the doors of the Tardis.She’s a waste of a main character.

The family drama would have been fine if this wasn’t a Sci Fi action/adventure series.

Yaz,Ryan,and Graham are still the only positives of this Non Doctor Who show. It’s more
like the Blood Hound Gang 2020.

Even the Tardis interior is starting to look crappy to me.I’m happy the show is off for a year and maybe they can use that year to find some REAL Sci-fi writers who know Who lore and can get this show back on track.

Someone suggested making this season about an Alternate Universe Doctor and rebooting it.

I give it and the season an F!!!Such a darn shame

Brain of Davros wrote:

Someone suggested making this season about an Alternate Universe Doctor and rebooting it.

I agree, Love! The alternate universe Idea. I Loved Capaldi as the doctor but didn't care for about 70% of the scripts and hated all of season 9&10 except for the Christmas episodes but regardless of that I still purchased every season to support the show through the Storm... you couldn't pay me to purchase this version of the show, If someone mailed me a free copy I would place it in the bin and never give it a second thought. That said, The Theme is nice

Winter wrote:

Brain of Davros wrote:

Someone suggested making this season about an Alternate Universe Doctor and rebooting it.

I agree, Love! The alternate universe Idea. I Loved Capaldi as the doctor but didn't care for about 70% of the scripts and hated all of season 9&10 except for the Christmas episodes but regardless of that I still purchased every season to support the show through the Storm... you couldn't pay me to purchase this version of the show, If someone mailed me a free copy I would place it in the bin and never give it a second thought. That said, The Theme is nice

Agreed,it has absolutely ZERO replay value to it. And even if you like the Theme,they didn’t even do an opening sequence for the last episode,WTF!?

Fire Chibnall now and be done with this Experiment in Terror.