DigificWriter

My reviews of "Rosa" and "Arachnids in the UK":
Rosa
* Although I'm an American citizen, I'm fairly ignorant of a lot of the specifics regarding the Civil Rights movement, and so I appreciated this episode for more or less bringing back the 'Doctor Who Historical' format as it existed in the show's early years

* I've seen criticism online that talked about how the episode shouldn't have used an external villain or put the Doctor and her Companions on the bus with Rosa, but those kinds of comments miss the point of the story, which was to highlight the oppressing racism of mid-20th-Century America, comment on the resurgence of open racism in the 21st Century around the world, demonstrate the persistence of racism into the far future, and present the Doctor with a problem that she had to 'fix' but couldn't resolve

* Through the first two episodes, Ryan and Graham were on even footing as the Companion standouts of this Series, but this episode pushed Ryan to the top. His enthusiasm at getting to meet people from history whom his grandmother idolized, his struggle to not overreact to the discrimination and hatred he encountered, his bonding with Yaz, and the fact that he got to take down at least one outlet of the racism he and Yaz had been dealing with endeared him to me even more and cemented him as an analogue of Rose and this Series' primary 'POV character'

* I've seen criticism online about Graham ending up as the person for whom Rosa was asked to give up her seat, but that's not what happened at all, and it's a little frustrating to see people not realizing that his role - and that of the Doctor and Yaz - was that of the 'complicit bystander', tying back to the diner scene early on in the episode where the camera focused on a woman in red who looked like she was uncomfortable with how the hostility level in the room had risen and wanted to de-escalate it but didn't

* The point of the scene where Ryan gets to meet Dr. King and other activists was apparently to communicate that Rosa's act of protest was pre-planned, but that's not what I took away from it at all, which makes me skeptical of such motive actually being the intent of the writing

* I loved the fact that both the Doctor and Yaz realized that they and Graham had become 'trapped on the wrong side of history' at the exact same time

* Krasko was pretty clearly just an 'ordinary' mass-murdering racist criminal, and it's weird to hear certain parts of the Whovian fandom speculate to the contrary

***

I realized after-the-fact that I probably should grade each episode overall, so here are my ratings for the episodes I've watched and reviewed thus far:
* A+ (The Woman who Fell to Earth)
* A (The Ghost Monument)
* A (Rosa)

Arachnids in the UK
* This one was a nice change of pace after "Rosa", giving our characters a small opportunity to breathe while also setting the table for the official formation of 'Team TARDIS 2018'

* I really liked Yaz's family and hope we get to see more of them

* I'm not entirely sure how since it wasn't part of the scene at all, but I knew that Naijia was Yaz's mom the instant she showed up onscreen
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* I really wanted somebody to physically smack Jack Robertson at several points during the story

* I like it when Doctor Who tells a story that has an antagonist instead of a villain (yes, there's a difference), especially since said kind of stories are pretty rare, and so I like d the fact that the mutated spiders were fairly mundane and weren't part of some bigger problem that the Doctor needed to deal with

* Parodying Donald Trump is kind of 'low-hanging fruit', but I didn't mind that Chibnall went there because the character being a Trump analogue wasn't the point of the story

* Graham seeing 'memory echoes' of Grace was a little bit underplayed, IMO, especially given the fact that he cites his grief and a need to deal with it away from a place that would only perpetuate it as his motivation for traveling with the Doctor, and I found it surprising

* I wish Ryan had been more 'in focus' as the Series' 'primary POV character' in this episode because he's currently tied with Rose as my 3rd-favorite Doctor Who Companion, but I also liked how the story used Yaz and introduced us to her family, so this comment is really neither here nor there

* I thought it was funny how the Doctor kept calling Naijia "Yaz's mum" instead of using her name

* I wish they'd given the 'spider scientist lady' more to do because I found her to be rather interesting

***

I kept waffling on my rating for this one, so we'll split the difference and give the episode an A-.

Summer Falls

Nice reviews i love anytime DW story goes to a historical episode and Rosa is just brilliant and there is another one in season 12 that is equally brilliant from a historical point of view that I don't know a lot about.

Having Ryan have mroe screen time I agree but I want all 3 I found this season didnt do justice to each of the companions but season 12 did

DigificWriter

I'll give a more in-depth review of the episode later, but I really liked "The Tsuranga Conundrum", which reminded me a lot of Chris Chibnall's Doctor Who writing debut "42", which is an episode that I really enjoyed and that I wish I'd reviewed more in-depth when I was watching Series 3.

Also, what I was hoping to have seen re: Ryan in " Arachnids in the UK" was for his perspective to have been more of a 'filter' through which we as the audience experienced the story, but, again, that's really neither here nor there.

Summer Falls

Yep I need to remember those episodes

DigificWriter

The next several weeks are going to be very hectic and stressful for me since I'm scheduled for an arthroscopy on my left knee in order to figure out the source of lingering and nearly-constant pain that originally stemmed from a now-healed tear of my MCL that I suffered after I was hit by two cars late last year, and so I'm (hopefully) temporarily ceasing individual episode reviews.

Summer Falls

Oh you poor thing

DigificWriter

Although I'm not going to do in-depth reviews of individual episodes, I did want to comment on Series 11 more broadly, especially since I'm having a pretty good day in terms of my pain tolerance and stress levels.

As I've worked my way through the Series, I've been accompanying my viewing with a small selection of Podcasts, and the overall sense that I've gained through said Podcasts of the wider Whovian fandom reaction to the Series as a whole was one of "we wanted more from this than what we were given", but, for me, the Series delivered exactly what Chris Chibnall said it was going to deliver, and did so brilliantly.

My favorite Doctor of those I've been exposed to is, as my Avatar attests, a 'Classic' one with Colin Baker's Sixth Doctor, and what I think Series 11 represents is a return to the narrative style, if not the structure, of 'Classic Who,' with stories and a Doctor that deliberately pull back from the more 'modern' narrative style of what the franchise had been following since its revival in 2005 in order to allow the franchise to grow beyond what it had been since RTD revived it.

That isn't to say that Chibnall completely abandoned what the franchise has become since 2005, though, because he very clearly used the 'Companion/character template' that RTD set up in " Rose" and then slowly merged that template with a more 'Classic' one.

In closing out my thoughts, I'm going to grade each individual episode just in case I don't end up getting back to in-depth reviews.

* The Woman who Fell to Earth - A plus
* The Ghost Monument - A
* Rosa - A
* Arachnids in the UK - A minus
* The Tsuranga Conundrum - A
* Demons of the Punjab - A plus
* Kerblam! - A plus
* The Witchfinders - A plus
* It Takes You Away - A plus
* The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos - A plus

Summer Falls

wow your ratings are pretty high for this season

i wonder how you will feel with season 12 and i will need to start a thread for that to

DigificWriter

I should've waited until I'd watched Resolution before I gave my episode grades for the Series, but it gets an A plus as well.

"Revelation of the Daleks" made me appreciate the Daleks in a way that my first exposure to them, "Dalek", didn't, but "Resolution" has now tied the former as being my favorite story to feature them.

Summer Falls

Wow and A plus . I think your really going to like season 12 it was better than 11

Summer Falls

Happy 3 years

DigificWriter

I just started a super-quick binge rewatch of Series 11, and The Woman Who Fell to Earth is still a phenomenal piece of television in general and Doctor Who in specific.

Summer Falls

it was amazing did so well rating wise

DigificWriter

I just rewatched both The Ghost Monument and Rosa - and listened to a new set of podcast episodes about them (Discussing Who, in case anybody's interested) - and came away wishing I'd rated both episodes higher when I first watched them.

Summer Falls

I really liked Rosa I don't remember if I like the Ghost monument