Tumbling Doc falls a bit flat
TOO much virtue-signalling, not enough storytelling. Too much running and driving around. Speeches in the middle of life-or-death confrontations. The new theme music. The sonic screwdriver – it’s a magic wand and a lazy cheat. DAVID Corkill was commenting on World Indoors Bowls when he said: A.Wightman of Newport wins £35 for that howler. Keep ’em coming to the address at the top of the page.
JOE Pasquale’s latest tour crams in daft gags, duff magic and dodgy mind-reading. ITV should film it. He’s never been funnier.
JODIE Whittaker is terrific as the new Doctor Who. She’s charismatic and fun.
It’s like she’s channelling the spirit of David Tennant with a side order of Victoria Wood.
Did anyone else mistake her for Leanne Battersby?
Wouldn’t that be a show? Time Lady Leanne clobbering cosmic creeps on the Corrie cobbles armed only with a sonic hotpot...in between seducing Cybermen and copping off with Kaagh the Sontaran.
More exciting maybe than this opening episode...
Eight million watched it, but that figure will plummet – not quite as spectacularly as the Doc did herself – if the plots don’t improve.
Talk about more pants than Calvin Klein. Chris Chibnall’s script was flatter than Cassandra. It had no proper frights, no new ideas and next to no sci-fi.
Villain Tzim-Sha, right, a snooty “Stenza warrior”, came to Sheffield to bag a human trophy. So we’re talking a poor man’s Predator.
His face looked like it had been pebbledashed with Rice Krispies. These were his victims’ teeth.
The Tooth-Scary’s target was wimpy crane driver Karl (Corrie’s Darryl Morton) – hardly Predator material. If he’d gone for Kayla Westbrook he’d have Email me at: garry.bushell@ dailystar.co.uk or write c/o Daily Star Sunday,
10 Lower Thames Street, London
EC3R 6EN bagged enough gnashers to cover Eileen Grimshaw...
When the female Doc was announced, vile sexists asked if she’d be able to reverse the Tardis into a parking bay without scraping the sides.
The first thing she did was fall out of it – plunging through the roof of a train to save passengers menaced by flying biotech tumbleweed.
She’s lost her Tardis and gained new companions.
Plucky nurse Grace sadly perished, but the Doc keeps her dyspraxic grandson Ryan, probationary plod Yaz and her widowed husband Graham (Bradley Walsh). He’s a retired bus driver in a West Ham scarf. Nothing here will petrify him as much as Liverpool at home next February. The Doc has a new image – she looks like she was dressed in the dark by Mork from Ork. And Chibbers has done away with Steven Moffat’s archly convoluted scripts.
This makes the show easier to follow, but it needs smarter stories and better villains than this – ones that reflect contemporary fears.
The Daleks were Nazis, Cybermen were Communists. It’s about time British sci-fi grew up and took on Daesh. Right now, the tone is CBBC with the death rate of a police procedural. CHRIS O’Dowd, far right, Get Shorty, (SkyAt)... A Dangerous Dynasty...Ted Danson, The Good Place (Netflix). KURRAN, left, The Apprentice – as smug as Jean-Claude Juncker and just as useless...The Bisexual – “comedy drama” that’s neither... Wanderlust – even the climax was unsatisfying.
‘David Gourlay has pushed it too much, if you look at where our rings are red’