Reviews

To begin with let me say I'm sure many will criticise this episode for extremely stupid reasons. I think the focus on representation and having relevant conversations is important. While I don't think it was very well implemented that's not what made this episode a failure in my opinion. So let's get to it.

The 60th anniversary specials represent a key moment that will no doubt determine the future of Doctor Who as it enters a new era, and none of these is more important than the first episode.

Russell T Davies brings us back to the domesticity that typified his original run back in 2005. It's a welcome change and this focus on families and real life is sure to feed into the resolution of Doctor Who's most heartbreaking plot threads: Donna Noble's memory.

Due to some Time Lord regeneration mishaps, if Donna remembers The Doctor then her memories will come flooding back and destroy her. This is exactly the kind of powerful story we need at the core of these three specials. The resolution of a fan favourite character's story. One that's hung over The Doctor's head for 15 years. And yet...

Put it down to studio mandates or Davies' own preference but I strongly suspect that the idea for these specials was to create a new entry point to the series. In other words, these would need to be as close to standalone as possible while still giving long time fans the payoff they've been waiting for.

The result is that this first episode focuses almost entirely on an ineffectual 'twist' villain of the week whose spaceship needs to blow up London in order to take off. An insane piece of engineering by any standard but not out of place for a lot of weaker episodes of the show. But this needed to be so much more. It needed to focus on Donna's story, but it chose not to.

Relegating the emotional core of the story to a handwavey B-plot is a baffling choice. The Doctor functionally sacrifices Donna to defeat a beanie baby. She survives by pure plot contrivance and she and her daughter solve the Meta Crisis issue by just deciding that it isn't a problem anymore and shaking off some magic dust. They tell The Doctor that a male presenting Time Lord would never think to give up power, a strange thing to say to the most self-sacrificing character in the universe.

All of this presumably in order to make the following two episodes more self contained. So the result is the worst of both worlds: a lore-heavy first episode and a rushed conclusion to Donna's situation.

There's still hope for this era, but it's off to the worst start in long history of the franchise.

We're heading straight into major spoiler territory here because this episode was focused around one extremely flawed evil plan and here it is:

The Master wants to become The Doctor so he can ruin her reputation and make her name a byword for evil. To accomplish this he uses a forced regeneration machine to force her to regenerate into him, effectively stealing her body and turning her from Jodie Whittaker into Sasha Dhawan.

A plan which could also have been achieved by saying "Hello, I'm The Doctor" and then shooting some people.

On one level it's nice that the hilariously bad Chibnall era has ended on such a stupid story. If he'd pulled some good writing out of the bag we might have missed him.

But onto the real headline, that spicy regeneration at the end of the episode. Jodie Whittaker regenerating into none other than...David Tennant!

Thousands of fans cheered at their screens in unison as the new Russell T Davies era exploded onto the scene, ushering in what we can only hope will be a new revival, much like what Davies first accomplished in 2005. Though now he arguably faces an even greater challenge.

Series 1 tasked Davies with resurrecting a series long on hiatus, a daunting task but one he rose to mightily.

Now he faces the challenge of rescuing the show from the festering quagmire of almost half a decade of lacklustre or downright awful stories, can he rise to this challenge? I'm optimistic but only time will tell.

Unfortunately, the Captain Marvel beeper created a lot of inconsistencies in the MCU, but nowhere are they seen more clearly than in this episode. The idea that SHIELD would use it and call Captain Marvel to Earth to deal with some partying aliens instead of the multiple extinction level events pre-Infinity War feels like a major contrivance just to get Thor and Captain Marvel to fight.

The animation continues to be wildly inconsistent (the lips in particular being highly off-putting) and the dialogue is thoroughly cringeworthy.

Unfortunately, this was a bit of a mess of an episode with some very weak dialogue and a severe lack of willingness to explore the implications of the events of the story.

Bucky slices Steve Rogers in half with his own shield then says a one liner and moves on with his life. Why bother creating a scenario where heroes are forced to murder each other if you're not going to examine how they'll deal having to do that?

Moreover, zombies that have the full capabilities and ability to use weapons of their human selves are wildly uninteresting. The episode ends with zombie Thanos with the Infinity Gauntlet, which is functionally no different to regular Thanos.

On the plus side, this episode had some of the best animation of the series so far. Admittedly that's not saying much, as What-If showcases some of the ugliest animation ever to come out of Disney, but this episode was at least a relative high point in that regard.

Honestly, it's just an immensely shallow and sloppy execution of a fairly decent premise.