Doctor Who Series 11 First Impressions: Episode 2 (The Ghost Monument)

WE IN THAT NEW TARDIS, GIRLS

Ooh, this one was quite nice. What's really fun about this brave new world of the Chibnall era is trying to pin down the themes and influences on the fly while watching. Woman Who Fell To Earth, for me, did give me some clear vibes as to where Chibnall's heart lay. I'll preface this, of course, by saying that the man has wholly original ideas and it all isn't just a rehash. We'll get to that fun, believe me. This is more of an anchor: some simple Doctor Who equivalent to use as a comparison. Woman Who Fell To Earth felt like a Tennant-era episode with a dash of Peter Davison in the Doctor's portrayal, which makes a lot of sense when you consider how Tennant was a Davison fan growing up. Here, with episode 2, we get something altogether stranger: an episode that feels like early Davison era, or early Hartnell. Early Davison did sort of draw on Hartnell, with one companion thrust into adventure against their will and an emphasis on exploring a mysterious new setting. This was no doubt due to the show being old enough that it started gaining nostalgia for itself, and you can go on a whole tangent about what that did to the show. Lord knows Chibnall, who was on TV at 16 decrying Terror Of The Vervoids for being a stock "monsters and corridors" plot, knew a lot about it as he lived through it. What's he got for us 30 years later? The Ghost Monument.


What a refreshingly gonzo opening this one has. Stuck in space, picked up by travellers at just the right time, and dropped onto some desolate sandy rock with three suns. Even the Doctor doesn't know what's going on or where this is. She does get her clever moment with helping the spaceship she's on land, admittedly roughly, but any landing you can walk away from, you know? It doesn't take long to get to what's going on here, sort of. Paris-Dakar Rally in space. That's a neat concept for an entire episode, but here it's just like one of... four or five the episode does. This is a wild mix. Still, we know where we're at and we have a goal. Get to the Ghost Monument, which is cleverly the TARDIS. Survive the hellscape of the planet Desolation. All while going through it, the Doctor is wondering what the hell is up... and so is the audience. I quite like this, this sense of discovering things along with the Doctor and her companions. Make no mistake, Desolation is a rough place. Three suns, flesh-eating microbes in the water, killer robots, weird... sheets that taunt you and suffocate you. Okay, so that's a bit odd, but hell. Let's be inventive. What I really love is the refreshing lack of anything to be stopped. Watching this through, I expected the reason for Desolation's desertion to be something to do with the space race, and for the Doctor to then be outraged and do something to non-violently tear the whole system down so no other planets got destroyed for such a petty purpose. That never happens. We do have our little moment of making sure the prize money is split between the two survivors, but the Doctor only raises the idea. She doesn't pressure Art Malik's character into accepting it. The episode thus just becomes 60 minutes of exploring a fucked-up alien planet and trying to survive all of the death traps. I really like that! The Doctor just got herself and her friends into a bad spot by mistake, and all they have to do is survive. Again, it's quite a refreshing change of pace for this show.


The companions all work quite well, of course. I take it with Grace's absence we're going to have some slow growth between Graham and Ryan. Again, don't quite like that. Sure, I like character development, but I don't like that we had to kill Grace for it. This is basically a fridging now; killing the interesting woman to spur the boys to talk about their feelings and focus on their pain. You can miss me with that, but we've got a hell of a journey to go so we'll see how it goes, I guess. I do quite enjoy Yas, though! There's some other things I'm not too fond of, like the Stenza being the reason Desolation is the way it is. I really don't want them to be a major recurring force in this series. Tim Shaw was a great sort of "joke" villain for the new Doctor's first adventure: someone menacing who she could still take the piss out of. Making his race an actual threat diminishes that somewhat... and then you've got this Timeless Child stuff that the sheets tell the Doctor about. For god's sakes, even Moffat knew when to quit with the arc phrase nonsense. Besides, any reveal about the Doctor is... ill-advised. Keep her past as a vague mysterious thing, for the love of God. I know it sounds like I'm complaining, but those few things are all that I really found wrong with The Ghost Monument. Oh, how the rest of it shines! I suppose I should mention the new TARDIS while I'm at it. Coral/crystal? Okay. I'm not in love with it but I'm sure  it will grow on me. It looks a little dark and cramped on initial viewing, but time will tell on that front. Either way, I quite enjoyed this one, nitpicks aside! I don't like the Hartnell era all that much, but I must say that I enjoyed this sort of throwback to it... or the early Davison era, maybe. Chibnall would have been 12 years old when that aired. Just the right age for the oddities like Castrovalva and Four To Doomsday to really leave an impression on him. If that's where we're going  to go, going forward? I'm all for it.


Next time: Rosa Parks? You're going to make a white person review an episode about Rosa Parks? Oh god.