Category: Television

“Wild Blue Yonder” quick take

Had the time to sit down for a watch of the second Dr. Who special episode for 2023, with David Tennant as the 14th Doctor. Found this one much more enjoyable than the first one, as the episode was focused on just the two characters (The Doctor and the Companion), in a spaceship at the edge of the universe.

So there was a lot less of the additional references and information that went into the first episode. Or at least I think there was; as the old Rumsfeld Matrix went, the episode could have been filled with unknown knowns. As a novice viewer, how could I know.

There was some fun stuff there with the idea of “slowness” that I want to get into; there’s at least a couple places where it’s been mentioned in sci-fi that I can recall, and the overall themes of knowning, not knowing, and unthinking thought carried through as well.

I’ll bring up the connections in the next recap episode, which should be out later this week. Until then.

The Star Beast

Finally watched a Dr Who episode. Seriously, hadn’t seen more than a clip or three before. Full thoughts will come in episode 19 of the Implausipod.

An odd episode: it felt like a speedrun through the required story beats to link everything together, and a lot of the rest was elided. So I’m not sure it was a representative story of the franchise; we got equal parts “very special episode” and “fanservice”, and while I was able to make some external connections early (and by the midpoint too), by the end it was all internally referential, and the titular Star Beast was a very thin foil for the rest of the internal narrative that the showrunner wanted to hang over the episode.

As a new viewer, I’m not entirely convinced to stick around. Let’s see how the next one goes…