Welcome back to the new season of Dr Who and a new season of us writing about our thoughts of the shows. We have a new Doctor (Jodie Whittaker), new Companions (Mandip Gill, Tosin Cole & Bradley Walsh) and finally a new Executive Producer (Chris Chibnall). With all that being said the first words out of my mouth after watching this episode were "What the hell was that?"To begin with, I do not like first stories of brand new Doctors. I have pretty much hated every one, except maybe Patrick Troughton's 1st story, "The Power of the Daleks", but to be fair I only say it in it's animation form. It's tough to like any first story of a new Doctor. The actor is just learning how they want to portray the character, the writer has never written for this Doctor before and the fans have a tough time connecting to any new Doctor. It takes awhile to figure out what works. But what I saw in this episode did not even feel like a Dr Who episode. This was a Torchwood meets Sarah Jane Adventures mash up and the result was a disaster in my opinion. They used the dark and gritty look of Torchwood and combined with that a really bad looking villain that looked like was used on the SJ Adventures and you got this episode. If you took the words "Doctor", "Tardis" and "Sonic" out of this episode, I adventure that you would not have known what you were watching Dr Who and that's a Bad thing. The blame goes to 1 man, Chris Chibnall. Jodie Whittaker will not be the death of the show, but Chris Chibnall very could well be if he continues this look for the show. I dare to even say these words, but this episode kind of made me miss Steven Moffat. I shudder at the thought.
I do congratulate them on not shoving "the Doctor is now a Woman" down our throats, which is what I was prepared for. I was pleasantly surprised by that. I hope they keep that up. Other than that, I don't have much nice things to say. We have a Predator ripoff sent to Earth in a big blue Hershey Kiss (you know that's what you thought too) to track down a human trophy. Tim Shaw looked pretty cool, but then he ruined it by taking his mask off and showing us his face with teeth embedded into his face. It looked cheesy and a pathetic attempt to have a really scary villain.Then there's Jodie's bland performance. I'm sorry, but she was not funny or even that good. I could think of a lot more talented actresses that could have filled the Doctor's shoes that would be better than her. But it is her first episode, so I will give her a pass for this one. All the people online saying that she was brilliant, either don't know the definition of brilliant or are so blinded by having a female Doctor that she could have done anything and they would say it was the greatest performance ever. One news article that was posted on Yahoo said she might be the greatest Doctor ever. Ever!!! Let that sink in.
The other things bothering me from this episode is why is the character of Ryan Sinclair trying to ride a bike on top of a cliff? If you had trouble riding a bike because of your medical condition, why wouldn't you try to ride a bike on a, I don't know, a flat hard surface like maybe a road or parking lot? But a bumpy, grassy cliff? Let's not even talk about that he's supposed to probably be in his early 20's. Maybe skip the bike and practice driving a car?Finally poor Karl, who just wanted to go to work and build some confidence but ended up being a living Vince Lombardi Trophy to some tooth faced alien. He finally gets his revenge on Tim Shaw by kicking him off the crane, to only be yelled at by the Doctor "You had to right to do that". Uh, Doctor, yes he did. That thing just traveled across the universe to capture him and let him rot on his home world as a trophy. He saw a chance to rid himself of a threat and he took it. Good for him.
With all that being said I give "The Woman who fell to Earth" a 1 out of 5 TARDISES. I think that's actually pretty generous, considering what I just watched. It can only get better, right? I sure hope so.