I went into this story expecting to like it, I didnt want the annoying chibnall haters to be right at all, but for this story I have to agree.

It looks very visualy pleasing and has cool cgi, as well as a cool setting. The idea of an interplanetary race is interesting and fun.

Howerever, the theme of it being set in a race is barely used at all and is only brought up occasionaly for pointless character building of the incredibly shallow side characters, who outright tell us their backstory and motives in a long winded exposition scene on a boat.

Most of this story was everyone standing around in various rooms and saying what they see and what they feel, no one does anything but ask questions all the time and the doctor just sonics to find everything out. 0 environmental story telling, 100% sonic story telling. Also I find the scene with ryan shooting the robots dumb as he is built up to be this emotional character who struggles with his disability, except when chibnall forgets he has it I suppose, Also why would the doctor care about shooting robots? Its not something the character has been uptight about before, only really with sentient robots or advanced robots. Also wish the tardis being the monument reveal happened way later but oh well.

Why did lucie miller say that

To me, vincent and the doctor is the finest episode of them all, certainly the most popular episode of season 5, they transformed the pain and mental illnes vincent faced and turned it into a big chicken, no one had ever done it before and perhaps no one ever will again!

10/10 masterpiece episode definitely worth watching at least 1 million times :)