Some interesting political commentary that I'm not sure how to feel about, but it was fun and I want to punt Sil into the sun

the doctor just be...murdering people like

It's a great caricature of the world we live in, whether in terms of politics, culture or voyeurism. The episode manages to be so rich in what it says. Obviously, a lot of the points are exaggerated, but I really enjoyed it.

Yeah, I don't get it.  I went into these episodes knowing they were a bit of a fan-favourite and people really like Sil, but this just didn't click for me.  It's a side of Doctor Who I'm never a fan of and does show up in both New Who and Old, where we get this chaotic, unfocused mess.   I wasn't the biggest fan of Attack of the Cybermen but at least there I could appreciate its relative berevity and at least some neat ideas.  Here though, even two episodes felt too long and dragged out to get through comfortably.  I just couldn't bring myself to care about this alien world.  It all felt too low-budget and artificially put together to get me invested in the setting.  Watching Sil stare at a screen and react to stuff over and over really put me off, reminding me of a bad take on the already questionable character Mojo from X-Men comics.  Sorry, Vengeance on Varos fans, I am not in your camp.

This is part of a series of reviews of Doctor Who in chronological timeline order.

Previous Story: Attack of the Cybermen

Another really great story, aside from The Twin Dilemma I've been really enjoying Colin Baker's tenure as the Doctor. This is one is steeped in political commentary with interesting implications. Sil represents some interesting ideas and could make for a good villain but I think the design and over-the-top performance puts me off a little. I feel like RTD was heavily inspired by this story for certain elements of the revival, specifically in the commentary on the media landscape and the immobile villain who requires assistants to tend to them (Cassandra).

I really like that the 6th Doctor gets some more traditionally Doctor-y moments while toppling an evil government (a favourite pastime of the Doctor). This is a much more violent story than we've been used to and while I've seen a lot of complaints regarding that I actually think it's quite good here. It's darker but I wouldn't say it's child-unfriendly which is the main thing Doctor Who should strive never to be. Overall, another good story and I hope the rest of the season will follow this level of quality.

Next Story: The Mark of the Rani