I've really come around to The Happiness Patrol.  It's a fun story with a really interesting premise surrounding its politics.  There's so much one can draw out of this story regarding not only Thatcher-era themes and ideas, but also thoughts of toxic positivity in general and how that might apply to today's culture.  Sure, the Kandy Man looks silly and might have been more responsible for the show's original cancellation more than anything else, if those interviews from that BBC producer are true.  Yet he's very in line with this story's themes and ideas.  I had fun with him and he works well as a particularly memorable henchman for the equally memorable Helen A.  The Seventh Doctor era has some great female villains and actor Sheila Hancock gives Helen a very distinct energy.  Sure, the story can sometimes feel very much like Paradise Towers, as the Pipe People remind me a lot of the characters we saw throughout Season 24.  That includes all the silliness that comes with such a comparison, but at its core, The Happiness Patrol has a tighter focus, more to say about the world, and features both the Doctor and Ace in a pretty fun way.  This is a good story and these episodes only seem to age better with time.

After quite enjoying The Woman Who Fell to Earth, The Ghost Monument is where I first came crashing down hard on the Chibnall era, and basically I never was able to recover from it.

I at first thought this episode was going to be great.  It looks very cool and has some excellent direction going on.  This episode was filmed in South Africa and it really, really feels like production took advantage of that in the best way possible.  We really get a feel of this setting and I think it does location shooting in that essential way, where you simply wouldn't have an episode looking as good if it weren't shot in a foreign location from the more traditional episodes filmed in the UK.  I have a weakness for such episodes, and coupled with the cool premise around the space race going on within the story, and at first I was completely sold - 100% ready for the 13th Doctor's first big adventure with the new TARDIS crew.

But then the episode keeps going and I truly feel the racing elements of the story are basically barely used at all.  This story could have been about literally anything else and it wouldn't change anything about the Ghost Monument or the SniperBots.  And let me tell you, there's few other things in Doctor Who I hate more than these damn SniperBots.  Aside from the gruelling reality they pose no threat at all, and we never really get a demonstration of their legendary accuracy, they also permanently derail Ryan's character to the point of ruining him.

I was so excited about Ryan.  I really thought a companion with a disability would be interesting.  Not only did that feel new and fresh, but have a character with a condition that might actually interfere with the single most important thing for a companion - that being their ability to run for their life - sounded like a very unique challenge for this character that could lead to all sorts of interesting situations for the Doctor.  Instead, it never really comes up again until the end of Series 12.  Instead, Ryan wields a gun, taking on these supposedly feared snipers with ease thanks to "Call of Duty."  I have never seen a potentially interesting character destroyed so quickly and thoroughly as what happens to Ryan in The Ghost Monument.  It's truly astounding how bad this writing is to me.  Even the moment at the end which should be exciting - where we get to see our new TARDIS layout - felt deeply underwhelming and even a little disappointing.  It didn't wow me the way other TARDIS reveals have in the past.  In many ways, this episode was a bad sign of what I was in for with this Doctor, a fact that still stings to this day.

This is a story I considered below-average to begin with that has only soured in my eyes over time.  It is so forgettable, it is so boring, and it is so lame.  It strikes me as a bad version of a creepy kids story - Coraline without any of the teeth.  I don't think the puppets look very good, and though it is understandable given his age, George's actor leaves a lot to be desired.  It's the kind of story I almost always skip on rewatches, and the few times I have indulged in Night Terrors, it's only really compounded my disappointment.  Rory and Amy feel entirely pointless.  They're not really in this story and feel wasted here.  I'm really not a fan of this one.

Yeah, it's another goddamn disaster from the Chibnall era. I really wanted to enjoy this adventure and at first I was down to explore this futuristic ship. Even the cutesy monster isn't necessarily objectionable if it is done well. I found the effects and the acting around them were really awkward though. The male pregnancy thing isn't really that funny. It's interesting, and maybe worth exploring but not really great as just a joke, which is all I can really make of the character since he isn't really used meaningfully otherwise, other than the character getting pressured into keeping the baby later on.  It felt forced and weird, as if we were just looking for stuff for Ryan and Graham to do.  They feel so wasted in their role as companions in the Chibnall era and episodes like this are a good example of them not really having much to do, let alone grow them as characters.

It's a non-story where stuff happens and nothing really feels connected. There's no concrete heart to this episode, no sense of focus or purpose.  Our characters do stuff until the conflict goes away.  It feels like a soulless product, devoid of any sense of urgency or danger even though there really should be. I was so excited by the idea of this taking place on a medical ship, but it never feels like we really engage with this setting much beyond it just sort of filling out the cast of one-off characters. These actors simply cannot salvage a script this bad and this full of silly lines and such broad, inauthentic dialogue that doesn't want to have any sort of real message or thought to it. This might be one of the worst in all of the dud Chibnall episodes. He's admitted to at least one first draft slipping through production during this time, and I understand this one was also rushed through, likely without a lot of second thoughts.

It's rare to be able to say this unapologetically, but Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror is a fun enough adventure and a good example of the better side of this era.  There's a decent if slightly cartoonish version of the historical dynamic going on between Edison and Tesla, which I quite enjoy.  It might be a bit silly, it doesn't feel terribly accurate to history, and the alien looks a little off to me, but on the whole I had a good time with an interesting little chapter in human history.

While not exactly a brilliant work of art, Nicola Tesla's Night of Terror is a fun enough episode definitely a lot closer to the level of earlier pre-Chibnall seasons. Goran Visnjic and Robert Glenister both do a great job bringing some life to the story of Edison and Tesla. The monster is a bit useless as like Fires of Pompeii this is one of those episodes where the historical drama works better than anything from the realm of science fiction here.  I'm not a fan of that side of the story.  The alien looks a greasy but is passable.  Problems aside, this is a pretty pleasant watching experience.

The weakest part of the episode is the Doctor, who doesn't have much to do and Jodie is ever flat to me. I think it has to do with the writing and direction more than her acting, though.  I had some fun with the companions, and it feels like the whole team do get some solid moments with Tesla and Edison.  The TARDIS crew might not leave much of an impact with me yet again as characters, but their little moments around Tesla is more than enough to make this episode worth the audience's time.  It's a lot like Rosa, in that regard, where these stories don't really add a lot to the TARDIS crew characters, but at least they relate well to these real historical figures and tell an interesting story in the process.

The Chibnall era was rough all over but the historicals were pretty consistently bright spots, and while none of them perfect, they definitely show a little more effort and sincerity to them that many other 13th Doctor episodes sadly lack.

A not terrible but thoroughly unimpressive audio short.  Death-Dealer hardly left any sort of impression on me at all, though I did find the idea of Leela navigating an alien market to be a compelling one.  In practice though, it's just a story where Leela gets stabbed, dies, and is revived as some sort of paid experience.  That, like the alien market concept, is a neat idea, but writer Damien Sawyer doesn't really feel like he has anything fun to do with the idea.  The pointlessness of it all holds it back, but the general quality of Big Finish recordings and the excellent narration by Louise Jameson does help matters a bit.

This was quite an entertaining audio. I like the idea of the premise - a virus that spreads through money, even when it is just the digital idea of money. Valerie has an excellent introduction and The Inheritance does a good job showcasing why this character gets so much praise and hype in the fandom. Not only does she make a great and entertaining companion, Valerie also has some incredible scenes with her mother - they manage to really sell the idea of online shopping being a matter of life and death in this context and I was really moved by those scenes - its heavy stuff! The Inheritance itself - this enormous amount of lottery money passing among a few characters, feels like a true threat, as does the larger corporate entities, villains, and structure that hangs over and threatens this world.

Yet it never goes too far. I think Alfie Shaw does a really good job at walking that line between a forceful critique of capitalism and the fantasy-heavy tones of the Moffat era. This audio felt silly yet not so much it wasn't serious, either. The politics of the story is clearly present here but not overplayed.

Hendricks as a villain felt a little obvious and a bit over-the-top for my tastes, and the pacing of The Inheritance feels slightly off - rushed in some parts while others feel like they take up an unnecessary amount of time.  Still, these are very minor points in an otherwise excellent adventure.  This is just a nicely balanced audio and an excellent start into a great series of adventures with Valerie, which I've enjoyed a few so far but have a lot more to look forward to enjoying.

A nice standalone adventure to really get us going in the early days of the revived series.  The Unquiet Dead is a great early story to get people more acquainted with the ideas of travelling around in time with the Doctor and what sort of adventures one might expect. For new viewers, it is a great resource, but is very easy to forget and lose enthusiasm for this episode with so many big moments and cool episodes to come.  For that reason, I think The Unquiet Dead is a bit of an overlooked gem.

I like the story, I like how it is all Dickens themed, and I do like the acting, especially for Dickens himself. It's fun to see Gwen's actor here, too. The effects feel pretty dated even if the circumstances of Series 1 do explain that to a degree.  There's a pretty fun twist to the story that gives it just a little bit of edge even if it these aren't the most sophisticated ideas in the world.  It's simply a well-executed ghost story and there's little fault in that.  All told, it's not bad, it's pretty damn good even, and holds up well to time even as the decades have worn on since this initially aired.  Though far from my favourite of New Who, I did enjoy this and have grown to appreciate it more over time.

So, my score for the final Ninth Doctor Chronicle is yet another 7. They are all about the same quality, though each for slightly different reasons. Bleeding Heart and Window on the Moor benefit from good stories but weaker performances, while the Other Side and Retail Therapy definitely benefit from the guest actors and Briggs seems to refine his impression a bit.

In all cases, the Ninth Doctor Chronicles are decent takes on this era and its adventures as pseudo audiobooks. It is nice that Eccleston is back, though, and I kind of am glad to have these out of the way so I can focus on Ninth Doctor Adventures going forward.

Retail Therapy is definitely enhanced by the presence of Jackie, and she gets some great character development here. The story around the Glubby Glubs feels far weaker and more along the lines of an average, early reboot era type of episode. It's a good enough episode, though I would say more in line with the average level of quality these Chronicles set, rather than this one standing out as it kind of does currently in the aggregate ratings.

This is an excellent chapter in Doctor Who history.  There was a lot riding on The Power of the Daleks - it was a huge gamble replacing the Doctor's actor, but I think Sylvester McCoy does a great job at establishing himself as a distinct and new version of the character.  It cannot be understated how big of a deal and how much this would influence the franchise going forward.  I think that's pretty cool overall, especially with how confident it feels production was of McCoy's take on the character.

The Doctor spends a lot of time playing his recorder here and acts seemingly like a buffoon.  Yet there's an inner strength and fire.  You can still connect all this to the First Doctor, but the performance is entirely a new creation.  It all works really well, especially with Ben and Polly understandably freaking out about the regeneration and not really knowing what has happened to the Doctor.  In a lot of ways, this would be the blueprint for all post-regeneration stories to come.  It's very impressive overall.

It helps that the actual story with the Daleks is great overall.  Sure, the whole idea of Daleks pretending to be good is outright a trope into itself at this point, but the idea was fresh and new here.  It definitely helps this story was executed in a memorable way, with lots of characters from the colony of Vulcan really standing out and leaving a strong impression on me.  On the whole, this is a highlight in the Second Doctor era. With only a few episodes feeling like they stall out the pacing a bit, it's very nearly a perfect viewing experience I would definitely recommend.  This is especially true with the animated reconstruction, which really feels like it restores the original experience of these episode as best as possible with existing footage and material.

As a trailer, The Last Message more or less does its job.  It gives a little bit of excitement and hints as to what the Time Lord Victorious is all about, but doesn't reveal too much.  If anything, this trailer might be a little too simple and too secretive for its own good.  I can infer a lot from the trailer, but only because I already have a sense of what Time Lord Victorious is all about.  A newcomer wouldn't have anything to go on just from this trailer.

Still, it looks cool as hell.  The details around the damaged Dalek are very well realized - you can see it in just about every part of the Dalek casing and I was thoroughly impressed by the visual art in this minute-long trailer.

I found this one a lot of fun.  Peter Davison goes a long way to encourage this audio's silly state.  It's hard not to love a fun little adventure tinkering with the TARDIS' chameleon circuit.  I'd love for more stories to explore this idea a little more, so I'm happy to see it even in a short story like The Deep.  Plus, I found it pretty cool and creative.  The TARDIS turns into a whale!  How can anyone hate this story?

After hearing what Geoffrey Beevers can do as the Master in the audio adventure titled Master, I was very excited for this one.  Sadly, And You Will Obey Me didn't leave much of an impression on me at all.  It wasn't bad, just dull, but in a lot of ways I'd much rather a memorable bad story than one that left me with nothing at all.  There are some great scenes with the Master corrupting those children, but the whole idea of his TARDIS up for auction really feels like it meanders as a plot point.  By the time that evolves into a bunch of aliens chasing after the Master, I was really disappointed on the whole.

So it's not an audio without any value at all - Beevers kind of carries this audio - but it did leave me lacking.  Aside from the introductory scenes Peter Davison's Doctor hardly stood out at all.  It feels like a real shame as I believe this story should have been great.

This is a cute but very simple and somewhat pointless comic.  It's written by Paul Cornell, which is a fun bit of trivia, but the real attraction here is the art by Lee Sullivan.  As this story features both the Second and Seventh Doctor, Sullivan does a great job at bringing both characters and some associated companions to life in his work.  It's very impressive.

As for the story, the Doctor's old signet ring falls into the TARDIS and some wonky stuff happens.  It is quite insubstantial, but hardly an inoffensive read, either.

Blink is one of the all-time great Doctor Who horror stories. It used to be my go-to as an introductory story for the franchise for newcomers, but I've since shied away from that a little bit. Blink is almost too scary and too good to the extent it feels as though it might leave new viewers with the wrong impression for the larger franchise. It's better for something fans discover on their own time, and let its work its magic more naturally without the weight of being somebody's first episode.

I love the framing of this story and it does a really good job of featuring the Doctor in a very limited role. Sally Sparrow is extremely entertaining and well done as a protagonist. I can totally see why she was considered for a more full-time companion part.  That would have been very cool.

The Angels are every bit as terrifying as when I first saw this episode. Blink is extremely re-watchable and holds up really well against the test of time. Even the DVD extras don't feel culturally irrelevant all these years and innovations later. It's easy to forget how ingenious these monsters were right out of the box, too. Moffat had a really good idea here and it is explored excellently across the episode, with so much care and attention given to building suspense and tension as we learn more and more about the Weeping Angels. It's a really strong build-up to a scary ending I really didn't know how our characters were going to survive, and the little trick with the TARDIS at the end works well for a quick resolution. Fine content overall, especially because you can figure out how everything fits together right at the ending in a way that is immensely satisfying for any story.

I guess the ratings and reputation of Phobos should have warned me, but some people really like this one and I was hoping I might have been one of them.  I was left deeply disappointed by this audio, however.  Something about the adrenaline junkie characters just rubbed me the wrong way - I found them very loud, tropey, and annoying. They're bad characters in a horror movie in a story that kind of had the sophistication of Scooby Doo.

I never bought this setting.  I feel like the idea of a story taking place in a theme park centred around adrenaline would be a lot more interesting but I didn't really feel like the audio brought me into it.  We have so few characters and none of them feel real to me, and the whole idea of the theme park seemed at odds with the snowy mountain setting and fear-based content.  The story just really doesn't seem to come together in a coherent way I could grapple with.

There's an interesting idea buried here all about a fear god feeding on these people but I found the execution of it all just terrible.  Sure, it winds up having the Doctor pull a Rings of Akhatan years before that episode was made, but the show does that moment so much better.  It's a cool moment here but it feels underplayed and everything else going on here leaves me feeling hollow.  It just takes us so long to get to anything I found interesting and not just this shallow mess.  I think that's why the Doctor's big moments in this story felt really underwhelming to me - they don't feel earned in a story that simply wasn't engaging with me.  I had trouble simply caring about this fear god when all the other characters feel entirely unnecessary for the story, nor do they get any real pay-off in the form of any sort of narrative arc.  Considering that the fear-god thing feels entirely abstract and in-personable as a main threat, I'm left feeling like this was kind of a waste of my time. From my experience, Phobos has serious narrative issues and deserves its relatively low grade.

This wasn't terrible and reminds me a bit of Revelation of the Daleks, in that both seem to stand out a bit better as content compared to the rest of the season.  I found this story a lot harder to get through than Revelation, though.  In comparison, this one spends a lot of time with really lousy dialogue that feels totally forced and unnatural, while, even though this story isn't really that long, it feels like it drags on a bit.  The whole historical background of this story was interesting but most of the scenes that come out of it wound up being pretty boring.  I've really come to dislike Anthony Ainley's acting for the Master, too.  He's just not fun like Roger Delgado or even the Decaying Masters were.

I'm giving it a decent bit of a pass though, because at the end of the day, it has a goofy comic book feel to it I could quite appreciate.  The Rani and the Master teaming up is simple, but a lot of fun, and I did enjoy how they introduce her character here.  We basically don't have any other female recurring villains like this and won't again until Missy, I guess, so it is nice to see her here and this might just be the only halfway good television Rani story, so that's something.

This is a very weird story, but I sure enjoyed it more than I didn't.  Compared to the rest of Season 22, it does feel a bit like a masterpiece, but I'm not so sure it is totally immune to the larger, troubling trends of this season, it just mitigates that with a lot of creative content around the Daleks.  Look, even by this point in the show's history, the Daleks can get a little repetitive, but this feels anything but the usual Dalek affair.  I really like the body horror elements around the Glass Dalek, but tragically, that stuff does feel minimal compared to the larger nature of the story and its scope.  Yet that other stuff is pretty good, too.  Peri and the Doctor don't quite feel like the nightmares they've been all season, while the stuff with Davros was pretty well done overall.  Still, it feels like a nice culmination of what has come so far in the 80s Dalek stories, and I have to say I am largely on board with these takes on the Daleks.  I was definitely entertained overall and that compares well to a lot of the other lesser Dalek stories that come before and after Revelation of the Daleks.  That's really all one can ask for.

Well, here it is.  My very last review of Torchwood TV.  It's been both fun and a bit of a nightmare revisiting this series, so I'm glad I'm able to close out on one of the best (if not the best) standalone episodes.  Fragments is really cool, featuring a number of flashbacks of each of the Torchwood team joining up with Jack's crew.  It's a particularly devastating thing to do in the midst of what feels like they are killing off the entire main cast and essentially ending the series as we know it.  This episode would be an easy 10/10 and a haunting memory - and in many ways it still is - but I do hit the same problem I always struggle with regarding Torchwood.  These characters have been presented as liars, cheaters, and date rapists.  It is really hard to fully sympathize with someone like Owen (or really anyone on the team) when they have been so thoroughly depicted as despicable people all in the name of having a show seem adult and mature.  Still, most of that can't be blamed on Fragments, which is solid TV and a great chapter in Torchwood history.  In a better show, this would be an episode of legends on the level of something like the Red Wedding.  As it stands, it is an interesting bit of trivia for the slightly more hardcore Doctor Who fans out there.

I checked out Quinnis as I started getting into more of Susan's arc with the Eighth Doctor. The importance of this to that story is very minimal at best, as Quinnis almost completely stands on its own, although listeners will note a very direct reference in the introduction to An Earthly Child. This story fills in the details of a random line Susan has in The Edge of Destruction from the classic TV series, and Quinnis sets up the events that would lead to the pilot episode of Doctor Who, An Unearthly Child. The TARDIS' chameleon circuit even works here, which I found very fun as a detail.

All that is pretty cool. Even more interesting is the idea of the setting, the world of Quinnis in the Fourth Universe. This is a pretty cool setting that should lead to imaginative content. Unfortunately, the Fourth Universe doesn't really feel all that different from an alien world in our universe. I really wish the actual plot was more creative, because the production itself is rock solid. The special effects and music do a great job at establishing mood. Quinnis is a jungle world and I feel like production did a good job with that. Susan is great, Carole Ann Ford bringing a retroactive life to her character that gets to be more dynamic and active than she ever was in the show. Carole also does a pretty good impression of the First Doctor. It's also neat because Ford's daughter is performing with her here, and they work well together, even if Tara-Louise Kaye's character left a lot to be desired.

It's an interesting audio in that the weakest element is by far the writing but everything else is good enough it is at least worth listening to once. I was most entertained by the bonus interview where Ford and her daughter just got to talk about this stuff and their perspective on the story and Doctor Who as a whole, more than the actual story of Quinnis, which is an unfortunate sign if there ever was one.

A pretty strong finale overall.  I like how ballsy Exit Wounds is and how tough this conflict really feels on our main characters.  It really feels like they practically killed off the main cast with this one and it's not something you typically see on television, so it definitely stands out in a positive way and this finale, coupled with Fragments, really puts forward Torchwood as something of value where it often had struggled with this consistent level of mature tone up until this point.  It feels like we finally reach a point where Torchwood is working for me, and the status quo is basically permanently thrown out the window in the process, with the show never returning to its more standard, episodic approach from here on out.

So it's bittersweet as hell, very much feeling like the end of an era that only now really found its footing.  Though I do have to admit even here, the sense of misery porn the show too often revelled in prevent this episode from really being something I can whole-heartedly say I enjoyed or consider truly great.  I get worn down by how depressing of an experience this is for the Torchwood team after a while.  At a certain point, it's hard to feel for Jack when his experience is this distressing.  It's upsetting to watch and not something I'd be eager to revisit any time soon, but boy, what an experience it was overall.  I'm glad I watched and can appreciate the craftsmanship behind the story, but it is a tiring viewing experience in a lot of ways.  It doesn't necessarily fall on the degree of dark storytelling - look no further than Torchwood's own Children of Earth for a darker story - but one I found less exhausting.  And that has a lot to do with the pacing and structure of the story, which I think Exit Wounds really struggles with.

I think this episode is a little underrated.  It's an episode that appears to just be the usual old fogey shallow complaints about youth culture - the type of content that has been created for all of human history - yet I think it hides a much smarter satire more on the level of something like Black Mirror.  Maybe I'm just a big dumb-dumb and I really can only speak from my privileged perspective, but I really resonated with that twist at the end.  Not only was it a surprise to me, but it's one that reflects everything we had seen in the episode up until that point and re-frames just about everything about the racist main character and her racist friends.  I really loved the Doctor's reaction to being rejected because of its race.  That felt powerful and is a nice moment in what turns out to be a rare thing with this Doctor, where I actually connected with his character.  It's funny, I think, from a character perspective, the Fifteenth Doctor's personality struggles to break through out of a lot of his stories, but here, in an episode he's barely in, he really gets to shine in that memorable moment at the end.

Anyways, it's a really cool episode overall, that I've only come to appreciate more over time.  Ricky September is just such a fun name for a character, and the absolute dreamboat we stan in my household.  Dot and Bubble overall was a nice surprise and a great treat that stands out in what is already a pretty strong season of television overall.  The whole Season might not be the best overall, but it does have amazing episodes like this one that really help make it stand out from the average season of Doctor Who.

The final story and what could have been the last ever episode of the revived series, Power of the Doctor delivers a lot of great moments, a plot that achieves the bare minimum of coherence and thought too many other Chibnall episodes lacked, and even a handful of memorable moments I think will stand out in franchise history. For once.

Look, some of this review might seem backhanded and maybe even a little bitter, but the reality is Chibnall's era had a lot of problems to it from the ground up, and they are hard to ignore in a story that both celebrates and ignores it. So many plotlines, like the Timeless Child and even stuff like the Time Lord Cybermen, are effectively abandoned (sure, the Cyber Lords are here but their ability to regenerate might as well just be trivia at this point), yet it largely all feels for the best. Instead of trying to tie up any of that nonsense, we instead get a story with some potential where the Master takes over the Doctor's body.

This alone could have been so fun. You could have had Sacha Dhawan acting like the Doctor while Jodie Whittaker gets to be the Master. But no, it's barely explored or used at all. The fact that Jodie takes a backseat in this episode a bit just so Sacha can dress up like the Doctor and still act like the Master is pretty... empty, the more distant I get from watching the finale. What was the point? It does not help that both Dhawan and Whittaker have been weak as the Master and the Doctor in my eyes. The Master feels way over the top while Jodie feels practically disengaged at all times. Is it not telling that this episode feels like a decent farewell to Jodie even though she's not in it for huge chunks of the story? I don't think that would sit right with any other Doctor, but because 13 is such a non-character it doesn't even feel like that (or the full abandonment of Chibnall lore) matters in the slightest.

And for those to whom it does matter, that Jodie is not around for much of this story, and nothing up until this point in her story really matters for this arc, this feels like a bit insulting to those who actually enjoyed the metanarrative of Chibnall's era, because that Timeless Child arc, the Division - all of that is completely ignored and likely to not be brought up again for a long, long time. So I have to imagine Chibnall fans must find this episode... frustrating, on some level.

So even something like this, with, I admit, many, many moments and cameos I enjoyed, I still think it was just okay. I loved the stuff with the other Doctor cameos, including the Fugitive Doctor. Jo Martin consistently shows off how much better she would have been in 13's shoes. In spite of my issues with Dhawan as the Master, I like him as a performer and got a good laugh out of his dance scene, and Ace was pretty amazing any time she was around. Even Graham was a welcome sight.

Everything else... it just felt like good riddance to what I am increasingly convinced is the worst ever era of Doctor Who. I really hope we get past the editing, music, casting, writing, and so much more that was endemic to the Whittiker era. Just about everything in it outside of a handful of episodes just drained me of so much enthusiasm for this franchise. Even something as cool as this, bringing back Classic Companions and Doctors, the Eighth Doctor in all his glory, and even the wild fun of the ending moments with Tennant, the best Chibnall could do with all of that was a story that was just okay.

It's the kind of episode I think could have been really fun if they leaned into the premise a little more.  I like the idea of a spooky story featuring old-timey film stuff.  Yet I really struggle to get any sort of impression out of From Out of the Rain whatsoever.  It's just kind of bland and boring.  Not obnoxiously bad like some of the worst of Torchwood, but not terribly moving or meaningful either.  It feels like a bit of a waste of time, really.

A pretty solid start to perhaps the darkest and most depressing corner of Doctor Who.  Children of Earth is overall very good, a strong experience overall, and everything is nicely set up here.  Frobisher has a memorable introduction here thanks to Peter Capaldi.  It's neat seeing him hear in hindsight, knowing now that he would eventually become the Doctor.  Even at the time, having no idea myself who Capaldi was at the time, I really liked him and he stands out as a very significant and dark Doctor Who villain.  Frobisher isn't strictly evil, but he represents that particular brand of human evil laced in bureaucracy and the coldness of professionalism that plagues modern neo-liberal imperialist governments.  This is Torchwood as it always should have been.  Political, clever, and a thriller that keeps you right on the edge of your seat.  Sure, Children of Earth has an advantage over the first two series, being stand-alone, it allows itself to really dig into a plot line with consequences the series initial run couldn't pull off to the very end, but the reality is Torchwood always could have been a little braver if it had this similar energy even without constantly threatening the status quo and the main characters.  The politics, tension, and villainy were never precluded by the needs of an ongoing TV series, in my opinion, and this miniseries is a good example of why that is, even as it takes advantage of standing alone and not really having to worry much about the future (as the series even here does feel like it is kind of winding down and is ready to go big and bold).