Bel’s monologue at the beginning is one of the best Flux moments, but honestly I feel no desire to watch this ever again.

I mean, if they’re going for something with this Wish World will be remembered as good and if not it’ll be remembered as bad, right? I liked the social commentary of Conrad’s fascist dystopia, hope that continues next week instead of turning out to be a red herring, and desperately hope that Belinda does something. Couldn't care less about Omega though. Also, hooray, Conrad feels like an actual character now!

OK, yes, most of this is a boring monster runaround and the opening scene is such a Ten being a dick to Martha moment but the church scene slaps.

I don’t want to watch a show with characters like this. Doctor Who was supposed to be better than this. It was supposed to be about people who gave a s**t about what was going on around them. Belinda’s personality is completely gone, to the point where I’m genuinely considering whether we'll find out that she’s under some kind of mind control tomorrow. In this episode that’s at least somewhat about corporate involvement in genocide all she seems to care about is The Doctor. I simply don’t buy their relationship here, and if I did I would hate it because it has the effect of making the participants completely uninteresting. I don’t think it’s too much to ask that there be some goddamn character drama, or that the someone who in her first episode was disconcertingly willing to sacrifice herself for strangers and called the Doctor dangerous for testing her DNA without permission would respond to him torturing someone Dr. Gorst style with nothing but a hug and a token note of concern (for him, of course. Caring about that other genocide survivor isn’t relateable enough or something). The politics were bad but in an extremely boring way. Society has moved past the need for Revolutionary With Valid Points Who Then Threatens To Kill A Bunch of People For No Reason.

Very good, got as much out of the premise as it could. I don’t think it’s possible to not have a great time watching this.

I joke a lot about the first decade or so of Classic Doctor Who coming out before pacing was invented, but in this case, ten f**king episodes, none of which drag. Last watch I spaced it out over several days, and it just gave me something to look forward to for all of them. Haven’t seen the color version, but I can only imagine the effect being to change it from a really good story that happens to be Important to an Important story that happens to be good. I don’t want to lose Carstairs and Lady Jennifer, or the resistance movement among the soldiers, or the dynamics between the villains, or crying over Jamie and Zoe’s departure.

The Story and the Engine didn’t feel like anything else I’ve seen the show do. It’s definitely my favorite performance from Ncuti, really leaning into the mythical and otherworldly vibes. Also kudos to that bit where the Barber turns out not to be every trickster archetype-adjacent thing from all world mythology. I hate it when everything is actually the same thing. Points off for kind of being about how great Doctor Who is, I’m sick of self congratulatory metanarratives and it’s time to retire the trope where we see a bunch of past Doctor clips. This does not apply to the Jo Martin cameo, which actually fit the tone of the episode. The spider looks absolutely gorgeous though.

Why does nobody talk about that one bit where one of the rebels sees his brother who got turned into a Roboman and he tries to reach him but it doesn’t work and instead they end up killing each other?  That’s what I like to see. Make a vivid world. Use your concepts for some emotional devastation. Have Barbara run over some Daleks. Poor Susan being left behind with only one shoe though 🙁

Don’t know why people don’t like New Earth. Rewatching it a couple years ago and it was so refreshing to see the leads just care about other people. Zombie horror but the zombies can be saved. Ten and Rose are also super cute, and the body swapping stuff is fun as hell.

Cheers, I guess, to Lucky Day for doing something new with a recently departed companion. It was nice to see Ruby again, and I liked her characterization as someone who was knowledgeable about aliens but also dealing with trauma. Also, less politically noxious than I was worried about when I saw Pete McTighe was coming back. Unfortunately, I felt like I was watching a PSA about misinformation from our friends at Bad Wolf Studios. Conrad was such a crap villain; evil because he sucked, and the episode needs to constantly remind us of how much he sucks. Maybe if they did something with what Think Tank believed (are they the same guys as in Robot? I hope they are, shame they’ve been shed of all BRAT characteristics though) it would have been interesting. Also, all the shots of UNIT’s cool guns and planes with the dramatic music made me cringe. Maybe spend that time making your villain interesting or the Shreek scary instead.