Again this passage may contain a handful of grammatical mistakes but I’m too disappointed to care. And if you’re reading this without seeing the episode - I don’t even care anymore because honestly there’s not much to spoil.

The entire episode is problematic and full of flaws as ever. It feels like an inadequate pastiche of what Doctor Who used to be. Chibnall is ONLY good at throwing in low-effort “Easter Eggs” that suggest a parallel/déjà-vu between the current episode and the previous episodes, aiming to evoke a cheap emotional response from its loyal viewers.

Plot = Victory of the Daleks from a decade ago

Captain Jack = Mentioning his history with the Doctor and Torchwood, making the audience feel that it’s still “The Good Old Days” when it’s so apparently not

Tosin Cole = trying to be Martha Jones in the end but it has 0 emotional resonance

Graham/Grace = are you trying to imitate the last scene between 12 and Clara in TuaT?

Moreover, the “human villains” are, again, incredibly flat and uncreative.

1. British prime minister, a woman, who trusts American giant corporations for no reason (her motivation was apparently “to make the UK secure again but I can’t see what’s making the UK dangerous in the first place apart from the daleks that they’re using for “safety”???) and cannot even make a public announcement without making people think “Oh is she running out of vocabs just now bc I hear a LOT of ‘secure’ there”.

2. An oversimplified, unbelievably stereotypical American villain whose sole motivation is gathering money and power to the extent of utter dumbness (I don’t even mean ignorance, I mean brainless). I can only see how British people still have this incredibly prejudiced and generalising perceptions when it comes to “portraying Americans”. LOL

If they are deliberate mirrorings of Thatcher and Trump then I’ve never seen worse attempts.

All the “heartfelt conversations” feel forced as well as illiterate.

逃出監獄就用了個倉鼠球？

旅伴的演技在Captain Jack/John Barrowman的映襯下完全撐不起來, even the demeanour of that “American villian” is more intriguing than those three companions added together.

I can see that Chibnall really tried, and that’s mainly the reason that I’m putting this much effort into listing where this episode did wrong on the top of my head. To see him actually trying to pull of a “good” episode somehow made the situation even more helpless bc it only reflected his inadequacy. I can already see all those social media posts putting screenshots of previous eras with the current era, trying to convince the audience that it’s still the same show because “this scene and that scene looked familiar innit?” “this line has been said before by the same character!” - and that would be the only legacy of this episode.

Oh did I mention the cinematography and VFX looked kinda good? And the scene where the TARDIS was surrounded by the daleks looked lit? Yeah that’s it <3

S I G H

Finally:

我，to 寶, completely unsarcastically：要不是被你拉著看我怕是不會看這集了，我是不是應該謝謝你。

寶, equally unsarcastically：你還是別謝了。

*finished typing this in my bed at 10 am in the morning - can’t believe I spent more than half an hour on this*