Jodie Whittaker returns for her final run in Doctor Who: Flux
Plus: Insecure, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Succession, and oh so many Halloween TV episodes
TV Lists Doctor Who
Here’s what’s happening in the world of television for Sunday, October 31. All times are Eastern.
Top picks
Doctor Who: Flux (BBC America, 8 p.m.): The eight-episode season is set to start tonight with a “Halloween Apocalypse” episode. As the first teaser demonstrated, the 13th season will see “Whittaker taking center stage (and center frame) to declare that ‘The Flux is coming.’ The Doctor then rattles off a bunch of Who heavies who’ll be accompanying… The Flux… name-checking the Weeping Angels, the Sontarans, and ‘creatures known as the Ravages,’ who sound, and we hate to judge a book by its murder-cover here, like they might be bad.” Caroline Siede will be back in the TARDIS on recapping duty.
Insecure (HBO, 10:00 p.m)
Curb Your Enthusiasm (HBO, 10:30 p.m.): Maybe you want to spend Halloween watching Larry get tortured? Last week, the season 11 premiere even had us “feeling bad for the guy on more than one occasion and nodding vehemently as he made the very valid point that six months is a long time to wait for repayment of a $6,000 loan.”
Succession (HBO, 9 p.m.): Halloween is the “holiday we get to spend with friends” holiday before the holidays we have to celebrate with family. Why not engage in some JOMO with these monsters? In her last recap, Roxana Hadadi points out exactly how the Roy siblings claw at each other: “[T]hey’re digging into each other with particular verve and with an instinctual sense of what makes each other tick… Kendall’s read of Shiv as insincere was correct; Shiv’s read of Roman as unable to commit was correct; her ‘Unsubscribe!’ to Kendall’s self-important rant was gleefully mean.”
Wild card
Halloween TV Episodes (streaming on various): For your holiday viewing pleasure, The A.V. Club has composed a list of the best Halloween TV episodes of the 21st century. There’s also the delight in binge-watching only the Halloween episodes of a show that really delivered on them—Community, Parks And Recreation, The Office, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and Frasier have several seasons’ worth of spookiness to choose from. What are your favorites?
33 Comments
TUAYPCWI attempted to watch Last Night In Soho but was betrayed by the projector!https://mattthecatania.wordpress.com/2021/10/29/legends-of-starro-the-halloween-conqueror-of-tomorrow/
Ahoy, my Drewds! Thanks to a highly representative poll, the official awkward shipper name for Nancy Druid’s Bess Marvin x Temperance Hudson is Temperess! Please hashtag accordingly until this crackship sails so zombie Kegstand can have two mommies.
I really wish Jodie could have done a season with RTD. Chibnall’s heart just hasn’t really been in the sci-fi premise of Who in my opinion. I was hoping post-Moff that the show would get back to hitting emotional beats and writing characters that you cared about (as opposed to two Special-est Special People and Overly Byzantine Timey-Wimey Plots) and there has been some of that (I’ve liked this team of companions up to what I’ve seen) but my god, too many stories have been boring. It feels a bit like 5’s era where the talents of the person playing the Doctor have largely been wasted. Although I suppose at least Jodie’s era hasn’t been one Grimdark episode after another…..
I assume it’s a lock that she’ll be back for the 60th and RTD will be writing it, so we’ll get to see at least a little of that, but of course big event episodes generally tended to being out RTD’s worst tendencies so even odds it ends up with Whitaker and Tennant doing a scenery-chewing contest for 90 minutes.(ETA: also, the rumor mill has been IMO surprisingly quiet about who Davies is going to cast. Between RTD’s love of bonkers misdirects and Chibnall’s insane spoiler-phobia, maybe we shouldn’t completely assume that she’s leaving?)
The lack of buzz around this is amazing — people struggle to even feel hate toward Chibnall any more. He’s just exhausted them.I’m glad he’s finally going, but I wish there was some kind of accountability for the BBC execs who hired him. I simply can’t imagine anyone interviewing him who might thing he was qualified.
“So, what’s your vision for the Doctor?” “Get this — she’s a woman!” “Great — what else?” “She’s a woman. A female person. You know my vision is she’s a woman.”“What else do you have in mind for the show?” “Well, you know how Amy and Rory were two companions? My vision is to have THREE companions.” “OK, and what does that mean for the show?” “Can’t you see? It means THREE companions.”“OK, so your vision for the show is The Doctor is a woman and three companions and then… what exactly?” [Long Pause…..] “My vision is a woman and three companions.”Chibnall couldn’t write a Scooby Doo episode if you spotted him a rich guy, a property he wanted developed, and a box of rubber masks. Why hire him?
Grimdark? Grimdark??? Who has always been laced with darkness. Moffat’s run didn’t even increase the average, it just took out the fucking fart jokes.
“Moffat’s run didn’t even increase the average, it just took out the fucking fart jokes.”And then disappeared up his own jaxxie……Also, the Doctor getting darker morally has led to some of my favourite episodes (Waters of Mars being a prime example) but with 5 it went too far. I wasn’t actually saying Moff’s problem was being overly grimdark, his problem was humans not acting like humans (Amy and Rory came across as being largely disinterested about losing their baby) and needing to make both the Doctor and the Companions, the most special beings that ever lived.
“For one shining moment, Donna Noble was the most important woman in all of creation.” Definitely written by Moffat.
Did Donna ever lose her kid and not bat an eyelid for about 5 episodes? I don’t know that I love Donna’s ending but she was a good believable character. Moff’s plots were fun but a lot of the character work was lacking. Also criticising Moff isn’t the same as saying RTD never put a foot wrong…..
Again, if you think the character work is lacking, actually explain how outside of stuff that his direct predecessor did verbatim and that particular misstep in Let’s Kill Hitler.
So your point seems to be “except for two characters we are supposed to like not really reacting to losing a child” explain why Moff is bad with characterisation?What about the whole character of Clara? A billion iterations of her making it impossible to connect with her as a human being. Oh and even before River, Amy’s characterisation is lacking in certain key points. Her family is written out and then back into existence without really changing her much (the presence of family or not has a profound impact on someone’s personality).
With your other post:
He wipes himself from the universe’s database, his successor defines himself as ‘an idiot with a box’.It kind of rings hollow when you keep doing the plots about the Timelords going to massive lengths to mess with him and the whole threat of the Great Intelligence before that which requires Clara to be “the Impossible Girl” to save him.
—Yes, I do. Your previous point proves that hectic television production can mess with quality, nothing more. As I said upthread, the fact that Jean Luc Picard shows no effects of The Inner Light outside of Lessons is not proof that The Next Generation writing staff couldn’t write characters. The characterization in S5 is outstanding.
—Her family is back, but she still remembers what it was like growing up without them. Characters’ families don’t need to be the focus of characterization or the show just because Davies did it. The story is about Amy, Rory, the Doctor, and River. And that’s perfectly fine.—The entire point of the Impossible Girl stuff was that she was just an ordinary woman in the right place at the right time. Her character is a little thin in places, but again, this is more due to the production chaos that befell the Smith era than any fundamental flaw. Past that, she has plenty of characterization. As does Bill.
—Seeing as the Doctor is the main character, when you tell a story about the Time Lords, it seems logical that it would revolve around him in some fashion. That ignores the fact that Hell Bent consciously rejects a ‘Doctor vs Time Lords’ epic that many fans wanted in favor of an intimate character piece. Them going to those lengths just to get to the bottom of a mystery isn’t exactly out of character for them given their petty nature in The Deadly Assassin. Shrugs. I don’t think there’s anything else I have to add.
“Her character is a little thin in places, but”… I don’t care…, I think that should have read. Also how can you blame this on the production when most of a character’s character in a show is established via dialogue and all the things that would be in the script like dialogue, actions and body language?
Anyway these are the arguments I would expect from someone who thinks there is a “objectively false” take on a piece of television 😉
“Characters’ families don’t need to be the focus of characterization or the show just because Davies did it.”I’m saying whether you have a loving parent or two or none profoundly changes you, main charatcer, Amy Pond, as a person in this show. Not that we need to see a ton of them. Maybe that passed you by? Think how different you would be with or without your own family ever being in your lives.To the part with the merits of The Deadly Assassin/Heaven Sent/Hell’s Bells, I love all those episodes but what they are clearly not is an argument against the importance of the Doctor in the multiverse wide scheme of things. So I don’t know where you are getting this whole thing of “Moff made the Doctor just a mad man in a box again”. The character saying it in the dialogue doesn’t mean it is true, the character is maybe playing down their own importance across multiple times and universes?
Moffat’s not beyond criticism, but most of the ones that I see are just the same objectively false regurgitated nonsense. It gets annoying after awhile.
Seriously, the entire point of S6 was de-mythologizing the Doctor.
“Seriously, the entire point of S6 was de-mythologizing the Doctor.”By having him survive a death that was meant to be a fixed point in time so they could re-mythologise him again 🙂
That doesn’t ‘re-mythologize him again’. He wipes himself from the universe’s database, his successor defines himself as ‘an idiot with a box’.
From the Season 11 premiere it seemed like Chibnall’s run would be a lot more down-to-earth and character-based…but then he just didn’t actually *do* anything with the characters. For instance, Yaz is introduced as a lowly beat cop who wants to do more, but that doesn’t inform her actions at any point in the series. Ryan and Graham fared better, but they still never quite managed to have their characters’ struggles really influence the plot in organic ways.
Moffat had his own problems with characterization, but his characters all had big personalities which kind of covered up the lack of specificity and, as someone else mentioned, humanity. I’m rewatching Season 6 right now, and the way Rory and Amy just instantly move on from the River revelations is near sociopathic. Even at the time I thought it was one of the most bizarrely done storylines I had ever seen on television. And Amy’s treatment of Rory in Season 5 is just completely inconsistent and awful. I still *like* these characters, though, because they have a strong core that Chibnall’s characters lack. Overall, Moffat was more inconsistent, but Chibnall is more bland.
“I’m rewatching Season 6 right now, and the way Rory and Amy just instantly move on from the River revelations is near sociopathic.”And it was a shame because I liked both characters and the story is interesting. It just smacked of Moffat not knowing how to get from what should have been two parents grieving to moving on with the rest of the show.With regard to how Amy treated Rory in S5, it’s not great but it’s not implausible for a long-standing first serious relationship either.
A more polished version of Let’s Kill Hitler would have cleared almost all of it up. It’s just a symptom of the difficulty balancing serialized and episodic storytelling on a show like Doctor Who. It’s not that big a deal—any more than Jean Luc Picard recovering so quickly from The Inner Light makes him a sociopath. Amy’s treatment of Rory in S5 makes sense considering her abandonment issues. The characters are at the core of Moffat’s best stuff (Press Gang, Seasons 5, 8, and 9—everything else is just pyrotechnics). I find the ending of Death in Heaven, for example, to be some of the most affecting human drama Doctor Who has ever done, much more than the Doctor standing sadly in the rain at the end of Journey’s End. Shrugs. Agree to disagree.
On the other hand, I don’t know where Chibnall’s reputation for ‘character work’ comes from. It’s been abysmal in every show he’s been involved in. Just remember Seasons 1 and 2 of Torchwood…..
Broadchurch was nothing but character drama, and I really liked it. But there’s none of that here.
I think it needed to have repurcussions beyond Let’s Kill Hitler to work. Otherwise, there wasn’t much point in doing the twist at all. I think it really would have required River to become a full-time companion for at least the rest of the season. I don’t know what exactly stopped that from happening–budget, maybe?–but it seemed like the next natural story progression, and I was baffled when it didn’t happen.
I really like all the characters, and I really like all the actors, and some of the episode concepts seemed like they could be intriguing, but ultimately it just left me cold. Not even mad, just cold. Which is really unfortunate because I really do love Jodie Whittaker and I would hate this to reflect poorly on her. Still, to me it was miles better than the Amy Pond era, which I loathed.
We’re on Halloween number 4 with my small humans, so I didn’t watch anything new this weekend. My small humans did watch Curious George: A Halloween Boofest, as is their want.We also finished season 2 of Sabrina the Teenage Witch and accidentally started season 3. There was no meaningful delineation between the seasons while watching on Hulu.
On the recommendation of many people here from the top TV show list post awhile back, I watched season one of The Leftovers. Everyone whose description of the show made me think it would be my kind of thing? You were exactly right! Very excited to dive in to the other two seasons, but now I have to wait for my wife, who caught an episode with me and is now also hooked. Universally terrific performances both from people I expect them from (Carrie Coon *le sigh*) and people I don’t (Chris Zylka? THE Chris Zylka from CW teen dramas and B-level TV movies? Who knew!)Dune was really good. More than anything else about it, the sound design and score really blew me away. I’ll actively be perturbed if it doesn’t win those Oscars. I’ve seen a lot of press about how vast and beautiful to look at it is, but the audio is on another level.
Well, holy crap, Young Justice! Is crying at a cartoon OK? I don’t want to spoil the current episode for anyone who hasn’t seen it, but if the show has ever touched you emotionally, just try to sit through the end credits of this episode without shedding a tear. I couldn’t do it.
Oh, and in honor of all the climate conferences that will lead to no adequate action, I rewatched The East for somewhere between the 10th & 20th time. One of those movies that really resonates with me.
THE Chris Zylka from CW teen dramas and B-level TV movies?Excuse me, it’s “Best live-action Flash Thompson” Chris Zylka.
According to my DVR schedule the “Halloween Apocalypse” episode is going to run first this afternoon at 2:25 EST (some sort of simultaneous world premier), with the 8PM regular time slot showing being an “extended” version of the episode.Only noticed/mentioning the show because it stars Anthony Stewart Head, but for anyone interested the BYU channel is running a new adaptation of The Canterville Ghost at 9PM.
Runtime listed on my Comcast guide show the “extended” episode is precisely Two (2, Dos, Deux, Zwie, ETC…) Minutes longer.
I can only roll my eyes so far…
And I’m still grey…
Kinja giveth, Kinja taketh awaySo in the last week or two, reply notifications started working again, taking you to your post that was replied to. Great job, Kinja!Now, at least on the mobile site (iOS), TV reviews no longer let you jump straight to a show — you have to scroll recent reviews. And if you’re catching up an a show that ended a few years ago, good luck with finding that review. And it appears mobile Kinja no longer has a search feature, either.So once again, fuck this platform and its shitty functionality
It also stopped “like” (or stars? whatever they call it here) notifications altogether.I’d take the reply function over that any day, to be fair, but what a mess.
FYI, I gave you a star/like.
Is it just me or is there no longer any ability to search the AV Club.
Well now I know, and this is the only way! Technology is a miracle!
Just so everyone knows DW is airing the new episode at 2:25pm est on BBC AMERICA because they’re doing a simulcast with the BBC.