The opening titles for this new run of Doctor Who are definitely nostalgic for fans of the classic series. The theme brings back the distinct eerie theremin that always gave the sequence an otherworldly vibe, and the swirling vortex is much more psychedelic in the vein of the 1970s titles. It’s much less showy than past title sequences of the revived series as well. I don’t miss the TARDIS at all, though I do miss the Doctor’s face (cheesy though it was, I liked it). The series producer and director also get to be acknowledged by it, which is nice.
“The Ghost Monument” is a nice episode too. Though it doesn’t provide a lot on the character development front, it is engaging on its own terms, more so than the last episode, and benefits from some really rich directing and cinematography.
It picks up on last episode’s cliffhanger not with the gang being rescued via Infinite Improbability Drive but rather a pair of rogues in the final stage of a massive intergalactic race. On a seemingly barren and desert world, a hologram of the race’s moderator reveals the last leg is to reach the enigmatic Ghost Monument somewhere on the planet. On realizing the Ghost Monument is her TARDIS, the Doctor joins the race, promising Ryan, Yaz, and Graham that she’ll get them home. However the planet is home to hostile forces as well and as the Doctor, friends, and racers try to survive, they learn exactly what happened to this dead world.
Director Mark Tonderai’s work on this episode is really quite impressive. It’s utterly gorgeous in places and he really seems to take delight in some good framing -the four companions looking out at the three suns from a complex for example. He employs camera techniques such as dollying within a scene and Dutch angles. The effect is a fairly unique visual vocabulary for this show. Of course the clean and vibrant setting itself helps the episode look so good. It was shot in South Africa, in the desert, bright, clean, and unending, and manages at times to capture that elusive desert beauty of cinema.
The stillness and desolation hides a mystery however. The water contains deadly microbes and in the ruins they find robot snipers. In this I wonder if Chris Chibnall was trying to channel the effect of “The Daleks” the debut story of the eponymous villains, which is also about the Doctor and companions coming upon an abandoned civilization with a mystery as to its destruction and these apparent hostile robots patrolling it. The ultimate reveal, that this was a planet decimated by mass weapons testing by the Stenza isn’t necessarily an unconventional explanation, but it is shocking on a couple fronts. Namely it appears that this series is building up the Stenza as more than a one-off villain. What we saw of them in “The Woman Who Fell to Earth” through “Tim Shaw” wasn’t all that respectable or threatening. This episode seems to be trying to change that, by emphasizing their near Dalek-levels of destructiveness and remorseless cruelty. Angstrom, one of the racers, reveals that her homeworld, her wife and possibly family were wiped out by the Stenza through ethnic cleansing. This is a lot of backstory and added villainy being established for creatures who the previous episode came off as nothing more than intergalactic trophy hunting douchebags.
On a related note, the episode reinforces the Doctors’ distaste for guns, which in the current climate and the knowledge that plenty of Americans watch Doctor Who, is appropriately more pronounced than it’s been in the past. Ryan tries using one of the robots’ guns against them, going on a brief shooting spree only to find its’ effect is minimal (is this going to be a thing where Ryan inadvertently makes things worse for everyone?). When the Doctor pulls the ‘I told you so card’, Ryan moans “don’t go on about it”, to which the Doctor replies “I will go on about it, a lot” -and Jodie Whittaker’s delivery is strong and pointed enough that she might as well be speaking through the camera.
Whittaker is still a lot of fun, if she hasn’t quite come into her own yet. We see her more in action in this episode and, especially with the race moderator, she shows a great level of command and confidence. It’s also nice to see, even if it is wasting precious time, her little encouraging pep talk to Ryan when he has to climb a ladder out of a tunnel. It’s that kind of thing that makes the Doctor so great: her ability to recognize her companions’ anxieties, but not invalidate them while helping them through it in a really short space of time. It’s probably the better approach than the Fourth Doctor trash talking Sarah Jane to help her through her claustrophobia. Ryan and Graham’s tension is brought up again though not a lot of progress is made. But that’s to be expected given how early it is. They bond temporarily over thinking about Grace and how she would get through their current situation. But it’s clear that Ryan needs to open up more and Graham needs to stop trying so hard. It’s impressive though, to see Graham handling things as well as he is. There’s quite a bit of running in this episode, including unpredictable running so as to throw off the snipers, and Graham shows some decent agility and speed for a bloke pushing sixty. Though I guess that’s to be expected when he’s played by a former professional footballer. Yaz has the least amount of time dedicated to her this episode. There’s a poorly inserted bit of exposition given to her for the purposes of revealing her family set-up (she lives with her dad and sister). The guest stars actually get more naturally fitting backstories. I’ve mentioned Angstroms’, but Epzos’ involves him having been taught to mistrust people from an early age (through a story from his childhood that’s not entirely unfunny). Shaun Dooley plays Epzo, who you might recognize from series two of Broadchurch or (if you’re like me) his take on Joe Gargery in the 2012 Great Expectations miniseries. He’s pretty good for what the role requires here, as a tough guy nihilist pilot who’s much too careless, and most likely wouldn’t have survived without the Doctor and Angstrom. She’s played by Susan Lynch (Molly from Great Expectations) who does a great job as the quirkier racer pursuing a vendetta against the Stenza, which perhaps means she’ll show up again.
Here we also see a focus on teamwork and the growing affections among the gang. At one point the group encounters scavenger ribbon creatures that feed off fear, and cleverly manage to defeat them using Epzo’s lethal cigar in a quick-thinking group effort. Later the Doctor successfully persuades Angstrom and Epzo to declare themselves dual winners rather than condemn the loser to being marooned on the planet. In so doing though she fails to realize it makes the rest of them the losers so the two are whisked away while the Doctor and her friends remain stranded. Here, something happens that’s a rare occurrence in Doctor Who: the Doctor gives up. Believing she failed Ryan, Yaz, and Graham and with no way of finding her TARDIS and escaping the desert planet she gets quite despondent. It’s the companions though who then urge her to go on and reassure her that they can too. And it’s really heartwarming. It’s only been two episodes, but it’s believable the kind of admiration, respect, and friendship these characters have to her; and you could argue that the sound of the TARDIS coming and the Doctor’s renewed determination in stabilizing it with her sonic is linked to this. We’ve often seen companions who need the Doctor, whose lives are unfulfilled, in need of direction, or just boring. Moments like this remind the audience that the Doctor needs them as well.
The TARDIS does rematerialize in what I can’t deny is my first real disappointment of this series. I admit it would have been tough to find ways to travel through space and time without it (though there’s always Captain Jack’s vortex manipulator), but it still would have been a bold and creatively promising venture if they went without it for a length of time. Hell, the Third Doctor was completely stranded on Earth for a few years and that turned out great. But we do get the TARDIS again and the typical shock from the companions at its dimensions (without resorting to the “bigger on the inside” cliché). It redesigned itself for the new Doctor, but it’s going to be an acquired taste for me if I do come around on it. Not only because I quite liked the Twelfth Doctor’s TARDIS, but this one’s almost a complete overhaul. On the exterior, it’s more subtle: the blue is dimmer, the black and white of the Police Box sign have been inverted. The interior is much more drastic. The colour aesthetic is very much in the oranges and golds of the Tenth and early Eleventh Doctors’ time machine, with which it also shares its emphasis on the organic look over the manufactured one. It’s got pincers surrounding the console making the area look smaller than previous iterations too. In this, it’s not exactly welcoming, and seems a bit overly keen on darkness, which has been a running pattern throughout the revived series. We only saw a little bit at the end though, so maybe it does just need some getting used to -the one thing I like for certain is that hourglass. For now though it’s not one of my favourite designs.
Most may remember “The Ghost Monument” for this new TARDIS reveal, but for me the episode preceding it is much better. It’s a good adventure with some fun action and characters in a really compelling setting made in a stunningly professional manner. Chris Chibnall has emphasized that the episodes of this series are going to be one-offs, but I don’t think that’s entirely true. Between the foreboding way it discusses the Stenza as well as just the growth of the characters and the presence of their own arcs, I feel like already this series is building to something. But I have no idea what it is. Rosa Parks, who will be at the centre of next week’s episode, may or may not play into it. And just the possibility that she might is one of the reasons I love Doctor Who.
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