A lot of online comment on everything is extremism and this, like all the new stories at this time received a lot of hate. I find that some of the attacks were slightly over the top with 1/10 ratings and calling it utter rubbish etc. However, I do think it is sadly worthy of being called not good enough.
Like most of Chibnall's era it has pluses and minuses and on my first viewing I embraced the positives and tried to just see it as "a bit of fun" but when I rewatched it I found the negatives easily outweighed the positives.
In the negative side:
It had terrible exposition (a big Chibnall flaw). I would say this is the worst episode ever for expositionary dialogue because it seemed to me that virtually every bit of dialogue spoken by characters in the episode was unnaturally explaining what was going on or asking questions. It is very far from the "show don't tell" philosophy which Chibnall vehemently claimed to advocate when he criticised 80s Doctor Who. It is not good storytelling to explain verbally what is going on and what has happened all the time. It is also not fun or enjoyable dialogue to just be explaining the story.
It was a bit weird in that the Sea Devils seemed to have mysterious magic powers. The overall feel was more magic than scifi. It was a bit too over the top for my taste.
It is yet another case in this era of a convenient, contrived plot - The Doctor wants to explore a particular historical event and just so happens to get drawn to land exactly where a vital encounter regarding this event takes place. Rather convenient. Then she 'coincidentally' finds that the events she was randomly interested in are linked to a conflict with her old foes the Sea Devils. It would have been far better if the TARDIS had just taken them to this point in history. Most (not all) good Doctor Who works by the Doctor getting dropped into alien encounters rather than visiting a specific event deliberately and finding an alien encounter by coincidence.
As a result of these contrivances, the overpowered Sea Devils and the dialogue, the story feels cheesy to me. It is also badly edited. There are scenes such as a fight scene where stuff appears or disappears due to being edited incorrectly and the story makes little sense.
I didn't feel the acting was great either.
On the plus side:
It was adventurous and quite fun at times.
The Sea Devils returning was nice and they looked good. They were interesting antagonists.
It looked very good in terms of cinematography, costume and design.
Yaz's romantic interest in the Doctor was dealt with well - A lot of online comment beforehand prejudged that it was going to end up with a full-on romance. Many hyped that as terrible while others got excited for it. In fact though Chibnall did exactly what I prefer - He kept the Doctor true to tradition (pre-Moffatt) and had the Doctor avoiding romantic entanglement while remaining caring and respectful towards Yaz's feelings. I find it exactly how 10 was with Rose because, despite many fans calling it a romance, he clearly had feelings for her but held back from acting upon them or getting into an actual romance. He even refused to say "I love you" to Rose and said the meta-crisis Doctor could be with her but he never could. I was very pleased with the way RTD handled that and was very pleased with how Chibnall handled this. It fits my taste.
All in all this episode was a hard one to rate. At first I thought it was about a 5.5/10 but my judgement after rewatching it more recently is that it is 4.5 to 5/10 at most. I think my rating is a fair score based on my preferences but can understand if some people like the swashbuckling adventure feel it has and overlook its issues more than me.
My Rating: 4.5/10.
2022 Specials Ranking: 3rd out of 3.
Like most of Chibnall's era it has pluses and minuses and on my first viewing I embraced the positives and tried to just see it as "a bit of fun" but when I rewatched it I found the negatives easily outweighed the positives.
In the negative side:
It had terrible exposition (a big Chibnall flaw). I would say this is the worst episode ever for expositionary dialogue because it seemed to me that virtually every bit of dialogue spoken by characters in the episode was unnaturally explaining what was going on or asking questions. It is very far from the "show don't tell" philosophy which Chibnall vehemently claimed to advocate when he criticised 80s Doctor Who. It is not good storytelling to explain verbally what is going on and what has happened all the time. It is also not fun or enjoyable dialogue to just be explaining the story.
It was a bit weird in that the Sea Devils seemed to have mysterious magic powers. The overall feel was more magic than scifi. It was a bit too over the top for my taste.
It is yet another case in this era of a convenient, contrived plot - The Doctor wants to explore a particular historical event and just so happens to get drawn to land exactly where a vital encounter regarding this event takes place. Rather convenient. Then she 'coincidentally' finds that the events she was randomly interested in are linked to a conflict with her old foes the Sea Devils. It would have been far better if the TARDIS had just taken them to this point in history. Most (not all) good Doctor Who works by the Doctor getting dropped into alien encounters rather than visiting a specific event deliberately and finding an alien encounter by coincidence.
As a result of these contrivances, the overpowered Sea Devils and the dialogue, the story feels cheesy to me. It is also badly edited. There are scenes such as a fight scene where stuff appears or disappears due to being edited incorrectly and the story makes little sense.
I didn't feel the acting was great either.
On the plus side:
It was adventurous and quite fun at times.
The Sea Devils returning was nice and they looked good. They were interesting antagonists.
It looked very good in terms of cinematography, costume and design.
Yaz's romantic interest in the Doctor was dealt with well - A lot of online comment beforehand prejudged that it was going to end up with a full-on romance. Many hyped that as terrible while others got excited for it. In fact though Chibnall did exactly what I prefer - He kept the Doctor true to tradition (pre-Moffatt) and had the Doctor avoiding romantic entanglement while remaining caring and respectful towards Yaz's feelings. I find it exactly how 10 was with Rose because, despite many fans calling it a romance, he clearly had feelings for her but held back from acting upon them or getting into an actual romance. He even refused to say "I love you" to Rose and said the meta-crisis Doctor could be with her but he never could. I was very pleased with the way RTD handled that and was very pleased with how Chibnall handled this. It fits my taste.
All in all this episode was a hard one to rate. At first I thought it was about a 5.5/10 but my judgement after rewatching it more recently is that it is 4.5 to 5/10 at most. I think my rating is a fair score based on my preferences but can understand if some people like the swashbuckling adventure feel it has and overlook its issues more than me.
My Rating: 4.5/10.
2022 Specials Ranking: 3rd out of 3.