What The Flux?

[Batman's Superior Cousin]

Short Answer: No

Long Answer: Well… Episode Three is atrocious, so I would say no. I’ll get back to you once I see the fourth episode.

[Leigh S]

I think the common factor here is Chibnall.  Imagine being asked to perform the scene where your door i smashed down by an axe wielding figure and your reaction is "whats it with you lot tonight?"

Or your miniaturised house is handed to you and you have to say "How am I meant to fit in that?"

The greatest actors would (and do!) struggle with his insipid, unnatural dialogue and paper thin plotting

Is it just me or is John Bishop appalling - not his character but his acting. It's sort of flat and utterly unconvincing, maybe he's capable of a good performance but they haven't got it from him yet, but just ugh...

[pauljholden]

I dunno, everyone else has to work their way through awful dialogue, it strikes me those lines were written with the hope a Bishop would make them funny based on his normal dry delivery, but Bishop's delivery is pretty flat.

[Leigh S]

That's a fair point, though I do think a big factor is how hard it is to embue human rections to such unnatural dialogue.

As for this weeks, the Maxine Alderton factor failed to materialise... that said, has there been a decent Weeping Angels story outside Blink?

AS originally conceived they just dont work in anything but very very narrow scenarios, so various bells and whistles keep getting added until they are just a playground monster that has random powers to keep the plot moving - place such a monster in a Chris "anything goes if it keeps the plt moving" Chibnall story and we get this mess...

I did laugh when 13 wandered off early on to "investigate" a signal with her sonic - Jay Exci's video 100% accuracy rate maintained

[Richard]

I didn't even realise Dr Who was back on until I accidentally stumbled across it tonight.

I'd stopped watching around the end of Jodi W's first year. Tonight's episode was much better than anything I'd seen since Capaldi's last season. Apparently I've missed three episodes of this story, but it was still easy to just pick up most of what was happening as it went along (it helped that I already knew who the angels were). I thought the angels were scary enough, and that the characters were facing enough threat to keep me interested. The two time zones colliding and the little girl talking to her future self were brilliant, and the edge of the village just turning into empty space looked spectacular.

I've no doubt that the criticism of earlier episodes in this thread is justified, but this episode was good fun and Im looking forward to next week's.

[Proudhuff]

Well that was an improvement, they should have started with this one.

[Dandontdare]

I strongly suspect that what we have here is a clever time-twisty Maxine Alderton story about angels in a village, with proper human characters and dialogue, that Chibnall has hammered into his Division plot. The former sections in the village were great, the rest ... not so much.

[IndigoPrime]

I thought it was an improvement. I cared a bit about the characters. It looked very good. The acting wasn’t bad. The script was coherent, despite, as Dan said, the Division thing being smashed into this with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer.

Mrs IP summed it up though: “I’m happy to give shows a chance, but I shouldn’t have to wait for episode four of Doctor Who, a show I’ve been watching for years, for it to get good.”

I’m just glad it was better than the finale of The Morning Show (which is the worst piece of television I’ve watched in a long, long time).

[Hawkmumbler]

Is it just me or is John Bishop appalling - not his character but his acting. It's sort of flat and utterly unconvincing, maybe he's capable of a good performance but they haven't got it from him yet, but just ugh...

'Uncontrollable urge to make a Scouse joke'

[von Boom]

As it has been said this was an improvement from last week, however, last week lowered the bar to such a degree I'm waiting to see if they can manage two episodes in a row before making any judgements on this one.

[Colin YNWA]

I was half watching the third episode as the family watched it and from that perspective it worked quite well. It was a decent character piece - even with the poweeerrr offff luuuuvvvv stuff. Reading the comments here I think I'll not bother to watch it any closer and skip ahead to the 4th!

[Leigh S]

Expecting some kind of clever twist to magic us out of the fan fiction was perhaps a bit much - it's not as if Chibnall has ever shown he hs any finesse as a writer. 

But that was a painful 50 minutes or so - even if it had been "better", not reliant on a plot skeleton of a 100% coincidences, who would this appeal to?  Casual viewers surely just want "adventures in Time and Space".  I;d guess most fans want the Doctor's mystery preserved, but eeven if they all were gagging for the Doctor to meet her mom, what % of the audience is that?

How the Beeb let that snotty nosed knob goblin from "Open Air" take control of the show...thats some Long game. somewhere, I see Michael Grade pulling his rubber mask off to reveal the Master - Zoom shot!   SCREEEEEE_ WUDDLE_U_DUM_DE WUDDLE_DUM...

[abelardsnazz]

Really disappointed with this week's episode, I've only enjoyed 2 and 4 so far. Hoping that the even number success continues with the finale. Bah.

[pauljholden]

For a full review of this weeks episode. Let’s go to the Simpsons:

Lisa: Perhaps there is no moral to this story.
Homer: Exactly! It's just a bunch of stuff that happened.

[Richard]

I finally watched episode 5 last night and thought it was bollocks. Now, that could be entirely my own fault for missing the first three episodes, but on the other hand I could still follow and enjoy episode 4. So I suspect that the real problem is what Dan said:

I strongly suspect that what we have here is a clever time-twisty Maxine Alderton story about angels in a village, with proper human characters and dialogue, that Chibnall has hammered into his Division plot. The former sections in the village were great, the rest ... not so much.