Happy New Queer! Wait, I don’t think I’m allowed to reference The Thick of It too much, at least when it is Jodie’s Who and not Peter’s. Anyway, that was a completely “meh” episode, currently being held up as if it were the messiah (He’s a very naughty boy!) on Twitter all because we’re pretending gay is a new thing to Doctor Who. All the while ignoring the fact it was a time-loop episode (a poor one at that) where not only was the Black guy the first to die but also the gay one died many times too. Do we ignore “bury your gays” when there is a time-loop or because the gayness was louder this time, after a few years of whispering?

I’ll stop kicking the lifeless corpse of Chris Chibnall’s career in Doctor Who when he’s finally out the door. Yes, I’ll complain about many of Russell’s faults, but at least he could tell a compelling and competent story. This (on the other hand) was sufficiently adequate to cross the finish line and nothing more, leaning laboriously on the idea of some Daleks trying to kill the Doctor while ignoring the one thing we know about her: She regenerates. Are we all forgetting the Doctor regenerates when killed? Unless those bursts from the Dalek’s new Whisk of Death-5000 come repeatedly over the duration of regeneration, we get a new Doctor, right?

At least it wasn’t a New Year’s episode where she called upon some Nazis for some help, she just cheered on a bloke that used two Daleks to kill each other, which seems about right for Chibnall’s understanding of pacifism and heroism. So shall we get to the episode that regretfully I’ve seen three times now? Aisling Bea is the manager of some middle-of-the-road joint you’d find on Storage Wars, and you’d probably find a dead body somewhere in the building. She hates her job, her life, and Nick, the bloke that keeps showing up at New Year’s to store his random nonsense.

As it turns out, this was the wrong night to come to work because of the time-loops, Daleks, and that whole bother of dying several times over. I don’t despise the episode, I think it was perfunctory at best, trying to show enthusiasm while harboring none. Ultimately it was dull and lacked any fun pacing. I get it, I am spoiled with this interminable brain of mine that could see something that would have been better in terms of writing, acting, directing, and generally anything but the production design. I’ll say it until I am blue in the face, but Edgar Wright could have made something like this plot with a bit of decent script editing behind it. 

Yes, ultimately the whole “each time we reset, we’re one minute closer to Midnight” does become crucial to the plot, but never brought a sense of urgency to the actions of those on-screen. The biggest fault I think the whole episode had was just how flat that pacing was. Do a Hawkeye, set it on Christmas Eve, have the gang killed several times in a montage to Christmas music, and we’ve got some urgency due to some of those minutes on the ticking clock being wasted. Not only does the script get a kick up the hole from this expedient diminishment of time left, but it puts energy into the editing and gives us something interesting to look at.

Throughout the Chibnall-era of Doctor Who, the production design has been far above and beyond. However, there is not a single shot of that episode that springs to mind. Nothing particularly stands out the same way, such as Harriet Jones in the shadow of Tennant in a dressing-gown threatening her career. I didn’t have to say the name of the episode for you to get that I was talking about the “Christmas Invasion;” Matt Smith holding out a picture of himself, Einstein, and Sinatra with Santa and Marilyn Monroe to a child is similarly strong enough of imagery. Here we’ve got a reaction shot from a dull bloke from Chibnall’s only good (solo) episode.

If you think I am being unfair by using the specials of other Doctors, I’ll use all of Jodie’s run: Jo Martin saying “Hello, I’m the Doctor” and watching the Doctor having to sit there, complicit, as Rosa Parks is dragged off the bus. There are a few others, Alan Cumming springs to mind, but when Chibnall tries to do sci-fi ideas or explore anything beyond basic normal modern-day earth, it turns out bland or crap. Of course, I can’t just blame him, but I don’t think it is appropriate to lay all the blame at Annetta Laufer’s feet either. Dark, dank hallways and nondescript colorless rooms aren’t that interesting.

As for the writing on paper, it was just drab. It was that uncle that keeps trying to tell jokes at Christmas, always laying it on thick about race, sex, or gender, and every one of his comments are aimless or make no effort to assemble a point. When Chibnall wasn’t trying to fire colorless jokes your way like a Gatling gun, of which only two might have landed for a niche audience, the characters were little more than the hiss of white noise. The relationship between Sarah and Nick was completely useless. I nearly shouted at the telly when Yaz pulled out the “stop leaving us all the time” nonsense, and do we honestly just have Dan so Yaz has someone to kick when she feels like it?

We’ve come a long way from 9, 10, and 11 pretending they had plans, running, and thinking it up on the spot, but Jodie was less of a passenger this time around. Equally, I don’t think Aisling Bea is what makes the role of Sarah, at least not the same way Kylie makes Astrid, Chris Noth makes Robertson, Peter Kay makes the Abzorbaloff, Ardal O’Hanlon makes Brannigan, Carey Mulligan makes Sally Sparrow, Lee Evans makes Malcolm, Alan Cumming makes King James, or Lee Mack makes Dan Cooper. My point (more or less) is that you could swap out Nick and Sarah with different actors, and I don’t think there will be much of a difference.

The thing I keep coming back to days after watching it is simple: Could you watch it with your brain switched off? Yes, but was it enjoyable if you are actually looking for a story with characters and it is told well? No. The writing was lethargic, the attempts at comedy were unfunny despite having two active comedians in the cast, and generally, there was no one to hitch my wagon onto. I think I was supposed to find Nick endearing, the hopeless romantic with a catalog of tat left behind by exes in a storage unit run by his infatuation, but I don’t. I don’t even like Sarah, and I do like Aisling Bea.

If I am supposed to care about Yaz and her whatever it is that I am supposed to care about, I think it is the gay that Twitter has been on fire with. We’ve had her for four years if we include the very dry 2019. There is not much to her character and she’s not imperative to the Doctor’s survival or anyone else’s, I don’t know why I should care about her. We know she’s suicidal, one would assume it to be one of several hamfisted hints at struggles by LGBTQ+ youth. We know she’s needy, and we know she’s in lesbians with Jodie. Then again, I think everyone should be in lesbians with Jodie but not particularly her Doctor as written on paper.

If there was one thing I think was missing from this episode, it was more Dan, the Chibnall special: the old white bloke that’s a bit funny with a bit of observation. We got bits of that throughout Flux, and despite it being a trope after only two, I can’t say I oppose it when there is nothing else grasp at. What is abnormal about that is entirely the fact I don’t care that much for John Bishop, but he knows the role sufficiently and fills it to the best of his limited capabilities. Here he was the fifth fiddle to the plan, having one minuscule portion of an active role in what got us to places.

He’s the conduit to Twitter bursting into flames and he was moderately interesting with the “I’ve got a package here for you mate” bit with the Dalek. Otherwise, he’s nothing; Yaz was there to yell she’s gay, Nick is there for Sarah, Sarah is there to direct us about the dull location, and the Doctor is sometimes directing traffic. No one felt imperative to the story, no one has a skill or character trait to speak of to add something. Sarah notices time is shorter on the second go around and she knows where the fireworks are, but no one is Ace and an amateur explosives specialist or like Rose and did gymnastics as a child.

Furthermore, can we just stop pretending the Doctor is important? She’s the one that Daleks want to kill because of the Flux, whoop-de-do! She’s already the enemy of the Daleks, we don’t need to feign pretense for why she’s in greater danger because of one microscopic thing that was forgotten about by the writer who ignored wrapping up that storyline in his last episode with that in it. How hard was it to do the cheap thing and make it Nick? That gives reason for the hopeless romantic story to matter and gives us a reason for Sarah to feel sad about him constantly dying.

Is it a bad episode? No. However, I’m brought around to my regular comments about Chris Chibnall, not the ones about wanting to punt him into the sun, the ones concerning a script editor. Typically I’ll say that a script editor should have done X, Y, and Z, but this time around they should have just thrown the paper back at him and told him to write it again. For Chibnall, this was one of his better episodes, but that’s like saying, “This Rembrandt painting I did in my own fecal matter is the best fecal matter painting the world has ever seen.” Yes, but no one else is doing that crap, so you don’t have much competition.

I haven’t even addressed the simple fact that this New Year special isn’t very special. Going back to the first draft that Chibnall wrote for this episode, it would have been a middle-of-the-road, mid-series snooze-fest tiding us over for the big episode by Steven or Russell in episode 7 or 8. This wasn’t a special, it was the off-cuts of something he’s written for a series he’s never going to do as he’s pushed out the door. Why else would he be finally confirming Yaz is a lesbian now and not in the final episode, or better yet, long before now?

Ultimately, it was a “meh” episode, not accomplishing anything particularly well on any front. Laufer’s direction was fine, but I can’t criticize her too much as there wasn’t anything on paper that made for interesting visuals. Sure, the TARDIS had an opportunity to redesign out of that horrible “your mum’s healing crystals” thing, but it didn’t happen and there are still very few locations to sit down properly and talk. No one stood out for their performance, and Jodie’s Doctor speech finally making it to screen was crap. I guess all I can give “Eve of the Daleks” credit for is that it tried to tell a semi-contained story of its own.

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Doctor Who "Eve of the Daleks"

5

Score

5.0/10

Pros

• Dan's a delight when he's allowed to speak.
• Finally Yaz is out.
• "I'm not Nick" - Nicholas Briggs 2022.

Cons

• Drab writing and fumbling of ideas.
• If Nick and Sarah were cast differently, I wouldn't notice.
• Being shot with every dull or crap joke in the book.