Doctor Who: Season 40 / Series 14 / Series One.... Aaargh! 2024 Series Round-Up

Well, it's the morning of Thursday the 27th of June as I type these words and BBC Breakfast are live in my home town this morning speaking to the locals about the election and stuff. I generally loathe vox poppy stuff ("Here is some ignorant and ill-informed rubbish from a bloke waiting for the bookies to open!") and was going to switch over to avoid cringing myself inside out at it, but I was this many picoseconds old when I found out that a shop/food bank that I've walked past tons of times is run by a guy called Mark Auton.

WTF? All the times I've been in Horsley Hill and I never realised that it was in the thrall of the Nestene Consciousness.  That said, the malevolent tendrils of Shub-Niggurath's Polymos-based mannequin-animating spawn wrapping ever tighter around the brains of the town's inhabitants would explain my older sister's recent inexplicably stupid pro-Nigel Fartrage's RefUK Facebook activity; she's clearly not herself, it's the aliens doing it.

Sunny South Shields: twinned with Wuppertal and Innsmouth.

Anyway, I'm bored and the piece I was hoping to have up this week is taking a little longer to finish than I thought and have a few minutes waiting for the kettle to boil so here's my brief capsule reviews of this year's season of Doctor Who:

Young Team: not just a Mogwai album

'Space Babies' - Fun, slight, mid-season episode. Baffling way to open a bloody season though. WTF, RTD? Mynde yew, I've spent 18 years saying the same thing about 'New Earth'. Y U keeping doing dis?

'The Devil's Chord' - Loved it. Menacing, colourful and fun all at the same time. Jinkx Monsoon's Maestro was a great villain. Fave bit: probably where the sound drops out and we have a minute of silence, broken by the tuning fork. Melodia from SilverHawks would approve.

'Boom' - Nah, mate. I usually really enjoy Moff's Who (with apologies to Claudia Boleyn and Sophie from GallifreyBase and everyone else who has spent more than a decade reiterating their seeming allergy to his writing, I just enjoy his writing [mostly]), but this was just Moffat by numbers. Usually I'd be fine with that, but in an eight episode season - two of which hardly feature our new Dr Who - I ain't got time for dat shizz. Weakest of the season, even if not actually bad.

'73 Yards' - Yes! Moar of this type of thing! Favourite episode in ages, with M.R. James-y folk horror trappings (I'd bet my old mate Jim would have loved it - he's the guy who got me into reading authors like Thomas Ligotti and Arthur Machen, bless 'im) completely carried by Millie Gibson. Why'd you let her go, Russ?!!? Ruby takes on a Welsh Greg Stillson from The Dead Zone.

Also, it led to me making this meme:

Which amused me, anyway.

'Dot and Bubble' - Two Doctor-lites back to back? Maybe organise the season layout better in future. But a good episode with a great gutpunch at the end (even though I knew it was coming, Ncuti and Millie sell it so well); peppy little racist Lindy Pepperidge-Farm, murderer of pop stars, I cannot unsee as being a fascist version of Bryce Dallas Howard's version of Gwen Stacy from Spider-Man 3.

Gwendy: probably saying something racist

'Rogue' - Great fun. Always love a (pseudo-)historical even if this is no 'Villa Diodati'. Herron and Redman can come back and co-write an episode any time. Everyone rocks the frocks, and Indira Varma seems to be having a good time chewing the fantastic scenery - though I'd have loved her to guest in a more serious-toned episode. I never, ever want to see Bridgerton though due to it being mentioned so many times the word has just become an abstract fridge-buzz noise.

'The Legend of Ruby Sunday' / 'Empire of Death' - Guess who's back, dawg? Alright, Typhonian Beast. Very much a game of two halves (sick as a parrot and other footballing analogies are available), with a magnificent build-up and reveal in the first part - I was grinning for ages afterwards. I can't remember being quite that excited about a cliffhanger in years. Of course true to form the second part would largely fail to sick the landing. I mean, I enjoyed it but if you're going to reveal that Ruby Rey is just an ordinary person with ordinary everyday parents, maybe don't give her unexplained magic Jedi snow and music powers in the first place?

I blame the midichlorians.

Sutekh is a good doge. Much death. So sand. Such jackal.

That was a bit more detailed than I meant to write. Going to have to boil the kettle again now. Grrr.

Looking forward to this cuppa. Am singing 'mint selenium' in my head to the tune of 'My Delirium' by Ladyhawke.  Apologies for the half-arsedness of this, all.  For a Doctor Who thing that I put a bit more time into, there's this here.  For a Who-related thing I knocked off for a laugh whilst drunk that is inexplicably one of the most read things on here, click here and sap my soul.

I promise there'll be a better-written piece up soon.  Honest.