Doctor Who

Finally got round to watching the climactic double episode finale. I enjoyed the callouts to back to the future and Harry Potter but the middle third of the second episode was almost entirely the cast explaining the plot to each other. I think the show gets weighed down by its own narrative needs and all that recent and historical Canon – They have to shoehorn in all the necessary references and connect every previous episode from the series. And there must be guest spots for as many previous characters as we can find and finally all of the story arcs must be neatly tied up. This can make for quite exhausting viewing.

Some of the other episodes were great, I particularly liked the scary cartoon character in the 1950s movie theatre but the barbershop episode was so dull and claustrophobic with all the characters confined to a single room that I actually fell asleep.

So yes I enjoyed some of the parts (Ncuti Gatwa’s final lines were just joyous) but the whole ends up as a rather indigestible lump. Good try but it might benefit from a smaller scale reboot.