The battle of bippidy boppity boo is possibly the worst titled episode this side of “The Tsuranga Conundrum.” The penultimate episode in our reviews of a previous series in Nu-Who, the penultimate Chibnall story this time around, and the one that no one cared about, including the episode’s own writer. I complain a lot about Chris Chibnall, and there are a number of reasons to do that. This episode in particular, “The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos” (don’t expect to read that a lot today) is chief among the reasons to call the third showrunner in the short history since the return a crap, awful, and genuinely horrendous writer.

Let me pull an innocuous quote from this Radio Times article from back in April: “Particularly in that first series, I spent a lot of time helping other writers. We had some problems towards the end and I had to go back and do some big rewrites, which meant that the version of episode 10 [The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos] that we filmed was a first draft. But I just didn’t have time to do a second draft. It didn’t feel enough like a season finale, and that was entirely down to time.” That is a professional writer who was announced to be taking on the role of head writer, showrunner, and executive producer almost two years before this episode, and he shot the first draft.

There you have it kids, by that logic don’t try. There is no point, you’ll get published either way. What’s worse is the idea that something like the shot version of “The Tsuranga Conundrum” wasn’t the first draft and it was, in fact, just crap because it was crap.

How an abject failure of writing can be produced and even praised is beyond me. The absolute neglect to do the basics of your job not even to a great degree but the bare minimum, annoys me greatly. Hand something else off or get someone else in to write it, preferably someone who can actively write an episode of TV better than a chimp in a man suit by the name of Chris.

So, nine distress signals are coming from one bit of space with five planets, and no one cares. I could tell my editor that the distress signals were dogs that just needed their bellies rubbed and it would make about as much sense as five dead planets where only nine ships came for a battle. Nine ships is a diplomatic meeting in the Star Trek universe, if you want to up the stakes and make a finale seem impressive, make it hundreds or even millions. Better yet, because we’ve still got that fetish with implants apparently, make it one planet with millions or billions of distress signals.

I hate when I can write (in just a couple of sentences) a better story or a better concept than what we watched. I’ve said this before about TV and film. If I can write something as or more clever or entertaining than what I’m watching, then why am I watching it? I’ve found myself asking this a lot throughout the Chibnall era, and I’ve spoken to some who wouldn’t call themselves creatives but can subconsciously see where the lack of character, interesting story beats, and general entertainment comes in his writing. If I know how to fix this, why can’t a paid writer or script editor do so?

It is all Tim Shaw’s fault. What is supposed to be the connecting link throughout the entirety of the series, the point that brings everything together is the toothy bloke that was entertaining for a moment in Jodie’s first episode. From pronoun games to some crap about faith in some creators, it doesn’t matter. When the writer of the episode says, “It didn’t feel enough like a season finale…” and I agree more than I ever could with him, should I care? Quite frankly I don’t want to give this one a score because we can’t give a score less than zero.

This wasn’t an episode of television. This was several post-it notes with drawing pins through them and red string hooped around them. Sure, you can say something similar about Moffat’s writing, but at the very least there was a place Moffat’s stories were going. The battle of bippidy boppity boo doesn’t really wrap up anything. We get a bit more of Graham’s progression (and regression) with Ryan tagging along, but that’s it. Was this entire series about Graham and his loss? How about the religious extremism that you’ve only just realized was in there? None of it was interesting enough.

We have Tim Shaw landing on a planet, which later becomes the battlefield we see throughout the rest of the episode. That is meant to be the point connecting to “The Woman Who Fell To Earth.” Then you have him telling Jodie’s Doctor this, about more than 3,000 years of death and destruction of these planets with the battles, and we get her line “Don’t put this on me.”

You are the one that pinged him off to this place with reckless abandon. You are the one that had the power in the situation, and you aren’t remorseful or taking responsibility for that? As we’ve seen since moment dot, this entire series and the latter two as well showcase Chibnall’s 8-year-old morality through the Doctor.

Ultimately, “The Battle of Randskoor Av Kolos” is an example of why I found myself in despair when Chibnall was announced to be taking over for Steven Moffat. There have been small bits of his run as a writer prior to all of this where he had an idea and it really worked (until the end): “The Power of Three.” I’m glad this is how we’re nearly ending it because if I had to through another several series of very dark visuals and unpleasant writing, I’d be committed for insanity. With episodes like the battle of bippidy boppity boo as a threat, I’d be turned off of Doctor Who again at the worse possible time.

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Doctor Who "The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos"

0.1

Score

0.1/10

Pros

• Graham has a line or two.
• It's always nice seeing Mark Addy.

Cons

• How do you get a first draft published?
• "Duck" at the sniper bots.
• Does someone want to get a bit of light and color in here?