Eve of the Daleks

Well that was a ridiculously fun episode. Great humour, great use of the time loop tropes and some very nice Dan-Yaz and Doctor-Yaz moments. Can't wait for the Sea Devils to FINALLY return this Easter! I've been hoping they'd do that for ages!

My first Chibnall era review, and this is the rating I wound up giving an episode that I would consider above-average for his era. These Chibnall reviews are going to be rough.

The story is the special's best foot forward. It's not the most original idea but for Doctor Who it is great. A time travel show with a fun (and distinct) time travel plot. Like too many Chibnall stories though (e.g. Rosa, Arachnids in the UK, Can You Hear Me?) good to decent Chibnall ideas tend to struggle with execution. And while some like Rosa or the Tesla episode fare better than others with this trend, Eve of the Daleks is sadly yet another dud for the 13th Doctor. The fun idea of the time loop is largely wasted, in my opinion, and the writing around Yaz and 13 is just atrocious.

Dan is a name I had to check because even though the actor is charming, the character means nothing to me. I think all I will ever remember of him is the painful writing where he states, without any specific reasoning or examples, how fabulous Yaz is and how much her feelings are for 13th. But Yaz is a cop we were never given any reason to respect, and if 13 has any feelings towards her, we are only ever told as such, not shown.

Beyond that, all the acting, sadly Jodie included, came across as flat to me. This is such drudgy material, none of the actors seem super engaged in Eve of the Daleks with the sole exception of the lovely people piloting the Daleks (along with the always reliable Nicholas Briggs voicing them).

Special effects were tolerable relative to the standards of the era, but I don't see myself wanting to rewatch this one any time soon on my own volition.

The best Dalek story of the 13th doctors era, and a wonderful new take on a time loop story. ordinarily a time loop just makes the characters within the loop overpowered, they have infinite tries, anyone could beat a couple of Daleks if they had 7 billion goes, but this constricting timeloop, closing like a noose giving them precious few retries whilst the Daleks can also use the knowledge of the previous loop, now that is a far more interesting story to me. we get a slightly new Dalek design with the gatling gun, still not a fan of the claw, but the gun as a one off "if we just try shooting more maybe we'll actually hit her for once?" is fun, also leads to some instances of the Daleks clearly not being used to the weapon allowing for some fun gags, such as Nick ducking so they shoot each other, or Dan running around one of them. speaking of Dan, he stepped up to give the shippers what they wanted and earned himself the title of the biggest thasmin supporter. i also appreciated the gag of Nick making a pun and the Dalek just wordlessly shoots him in response, its funny how giving someone a few extra lives can make a death serve a gag. resolution of the episode is alright, nice bit of redirection, still not sure why karl the crane operator was here but i guess he got to see some nice fireworks?

In retrospect its funny this episode is about the tardis being repaired, 3 episodes before its changed but what can you do lol.

Really, really fun! A solid energy to it, it's got an infectious vibe that I find hard to resist and it's a great use of the Daleks, which long by this point, were maybe feeling a little bit stale. Big fan.