Doctor Who XXXVIII/12.10 - The Timeless Children
My review of The Timeless Children, like that of Ascension of the Cybermen, appears at Space-Time Telegraph, the blog which is the successor of its writer-editor John Connors's fanzines, which included Top, Faze and This Way Up. I wrote it having only seen the story once and much of my initial enthusiasm was qualified by other people's reservations. Having rewatched some of the episode since, I was reminded of the focused performances throughout and minimizing of languor. Jodie Whittaker's portrayal of the Doctor's fury and disgust at the Master was electrical, combined with eye-rolling expressions of frustration at just how tedious her old friend can be.
I wrote in the review that there had been no indication in Ascension of the Cybermen that the Doctor was periodically experiencing chapters in the saga of Brendan the Irish policeman - 'Gallykissangel', as I've called it, the term having been suggested by Paul Dumont. Ian Bayley has pointed out that there are odd lines of dialogue in Ascension which might suggest that the Doctor is being surprised by new Brendan scenes, but if so I still find them very understated.
As for the review itself:
So it was about authorship after all. Ascension of the Cybermen turns out to have been undermined throughout by a streaming hacker who couldn’t resist introducing it himself at the end and boasting of his reinterpretation of the ensuing acts, of which the Doctor was both audience and unwitting star. The Timeless Children was visually engaging television and I was surprised by some of the resolution it presented, if only because I was expecting something more complicated. Performances were very strong, and as with Ascension of the Cybermen, I felt an energy in the production which I’ve rarely experienced in the Chibnall era. There were a few moments when it seemed The Timeless Children did not marry so well with Ascension of the Cybermen, however, and in hindsight the episode left lingering doubts about the wisdom of the decisions therein.
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(Apologies for the large spaces between paragraphs, but this must be what happens when you copy across another site's code.)
Also posted at https://sir-guinglain.dreamwidth.org/2020/03/14/the-timeless-children.html.