Doctor Who 60th Anniversary

I didn't really enjoy "The Star Beast". Frankly, I felt that it was a preposterous and convoluted plot that existed solely to get to the point where the Doctor had to trigger the metacrisis to win, only to immediately be followed by a terrible handwave to just wish the whole thing away. Throw in a bit of casual misandry, and I was all set to walk away at that point.

Fortunately, the second episode, "Wild Blue Yonder", was vastly superior. This one only had a couple of actors slipping back in to well-worn roles, some nice creepy villains, and a surprising amount of tension, and it all felt like a really well-done episode.

And then there was "The Giggle". I felt that this one was fine. It's not the greatest episode ever, but far from the worst. There were some things I really liked, and for once it was a pre-regeneration episode that didn't consist of just waiting to actually get to that regeneration, which was nice. And Ncuti Gatwa was immediately impressive in the role. The only thing I didn't like was them keeping David Tennant around as an active Doctor - that feels like a way to bring him back if ratings dip again.

All that said, while I thought this amounted to some good episodes, I didn't really feel that any of them, or even the collective of them, made for good anniversary episodes - there's nothing like "The Three Doctors", "The Five Doctors", or "Day of the Doctor" there. Indeed, even the generally-terrible "Dimensions in Time" represented a better anniversary piece for the show, and that was a crossover with "Eastenders" of all things! (As fas as I know there wasn't any anniversary special for the 40th.) In fact, last year's "Power of the Doctor" was a vastly better anniversary special than these episodes, despite coming right at the end of what was, sadly, a rather poor run.

Anyway, that's that. I now find myself more or less looking forward to the Christmas special (and, indeed, it's really good that we're back to actually having Christmas specials!), where after "The Star Beast" I had thought there might be a good change it would be my final episode. So that's a good thing.

Oh, also... I really enjoyed the BBC's Musical Celebration. There has been some really good stuff written for the revival series, and it would good to hear some of those pieces in isolation. And Surprise! enjoyed them too - he loves music of all sorts.