Two episodes in, and we’re into Chibnall’s crap writing. “The Ghost Monument” is one of those episodes that tried to do the scale of Frank Herbert or James S.A. Corey with the writing ability of a dog. There certainly was a desire to do something big and pounding, get the ball rolling on the adventure side of Doctor Who, the side I love. The problem is the fact that the budget doesn’t allow for that scale, thus the design and generally everything feels like it was taken off the shelf. Those robots are in every artist’s sketchbook.

It isn’t a bad episode, far from it, but from a writing and design perspective, there are scattered or missing pieces to the puzzle to make it that next step. “The Woman Who Fell to Earth” is the bridge between eras, and it felt like that. So “The Ghost Monument” had to be the first proper case of getting on that adventure kick and doing something interesting, but all we got was the dying moments of a Sci-Fi-ish version of The Amazing Race and some action set pieces that didn’t do much. The best way to describe it would be problem-solving set pieces interconnected to some disjointed action episode, and it never met in the middle to discuss the point.

It is the writing of someone insecure, fearful that they won’t have enough time to explore their ideas later on, so they pile in everything they can making it a bloated mess. We know this now because I believe it is the first reference to The Timeless Child, the god-awful tacked-on piece to the Doctor’s lore that said, “you aren’t who you think you are!” The problem is that Chibnall has written or co-written 23 of the 31 episodes Jodie has been in, so there is no excuse for feeling so insecure. Someone needed to sit him down and tell him to chill out, someone like a script editor.

The robots and that ruin would work, but it didn’t need the army of robots at all. You could cut them and replace them with a couple of basic traps, nothing too big and flashy but certainly, something like a net dropped on someone or an alarm going off. In fact, there you go, an alarm goes off and you get a small robot stumbling out before falling on its face. The biggest problem those robots had was that they didn’t fit into the world that was written here: the planet itself was a desolated husk, ruined by the race that colonized it and used it for weapons development, so why are the robots in hoods so nice and clean? Everything else was sandblasted.

This was also the problem of Chekov’s (or, in this case, Chibnall’s) unfired guns and starts a problem that we’ve seen a lot throughout Jodie’s 31-episode reign as the Doctor. The robots are supposedly there because of Tim Shaw and his people, meanwhile, you have Art Malik playing Jeff Probst and sitting about in a tent being ambivalent about how to run his own competition. You’d think the robots would have at least some fingerprints from their surroundings, but they look as if they have just been brought in for the competition. Or how about the unused water threat?

Speaking from the experience of editing, you can see everything was contracted and cut down as much as possible, mostly from the pulled-focus shots. This is where I think all the steps for the ideas have gone: cut for time on an episode that is already longer than the prior series. I didn’t talk about it last time, but with an extra 10 minutes glued on, the episodes should have more breathing room to get ideas across. The trouble is Chris has very efficient dialogue, so very little of that really matters until he overloads an episode with ideas, such as here.

I remember watching “The Ghost Monument” when it aired and thinking about the logic in that initial segment on the planet with Graham and Ryan, particularly how stupid it is to run away from a crashing ship as you are in the path. Logic dictates you run towards it, thus it lands behind you not on top of you, and you are behind it. Then again logic has no place in TV or apparently Chibnall’s Who. We know this because he didn’t explain where all the stars have gone.

In essence, there is a story here that logically has good parts and Jodie is giving it her all, but as is always the case with a Chibnall episode, no one thought to tell him “no” before shooting. Yaz and Ryan are blank post-it notes of character still, and Graham is a gem. Why our lead four were never broken up into their rational position due to their backgrounds I do not understand: Graham the navigator, Yaz the authority, Ryan the busybody worrier keeping everyone safe, and the Doctor the problem solver. Each would then have had a position in the TARDIS, instead of being exposition boxes opened when needed.

One thing that wasn’t needed was the hiring of Segun Akinola. He is probably a lovely man and very talented at his job, but I get nothing from his compositions and that has been the case across all three series and specials. What doesn’t help him in this regard is the ever-present problem of sound mixing lending itself to: “Should we use subtitles for this one?” It was a problem with Netflix’s Resident Evil and it has been a problem with Doctor Who for a long while, but in this era, it was exemplified. At least with Murray Gold, I can tell you what Martha’s theme is; I’ve no clue what 13’s is.

Ultimately, I think there is something worth watching in “The Ghost Monument,” however, in doing so you’re swimming through an ocean of ideas and cluttered storytelling. I like the TARDIS initially, but as I’ve said time and time again, it needed a couch or somewhere to sit and not just those crystal pillars to lean on. I’m also missing that “it’s bigger on the inside” moment because no one but Graham has character. Anyway, next time: Racism!

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Doctor Who "The Ghost Monument"

6

Score

6.0/10

Pros

• "Come to daddy!... I mean mummy."
• Graham is a gem.
• Graham and those fabulous specs

Cons

• Noticable editing tricks to cover other issues
• A cluttered episode doing too much.
• Why are the robots so clean and untouched?
• Chibnall's unfired guns
• Art Malik is wasted sitting in that tent.