DOCTOR WHO s1e2: THE DEVIL’S CHORD

 ALL THE WRONG NOTES: 

DOCTOR WHO s1e2: THE DEVIL’S CHORD

 

I’ve seen on line on FB that fans are calling this better than SPACE BABIES. No, it’s not. If anything it’s worse.

 

There are apparently no rules to story telling now. The Maestro is potentially a great villain and a wonderful idea, a being that eats music and kills with notes. Yet, later “they”---that’s the pronoun of the villain---CREATE music. Even though they can kill with notes, John Lennon and Paul McCartney save the day by making music just as the Doctor tried and Ruby tried earlier several times to do and stop “them”---the Maestro, not John and Paul. Really this pronoun shit is confusing and annoying. Hell, BLUE BLOOD is on and that’s supremely better than this shit.

 

The Doc is, at first afraid of the Maestro and says he cannot fight them. Until, he’s not afraid and then he somehow knows the chord or the music or…maybe it’s me missing something….until he has a bum note. But John and Paul find it? I also like or rather don’t like how the Doctor and Ruby strut around demanding things from everyone (no psychic paper to be seen, which would have made sense but apparently RTD no longer cares about sense or logic or plot building) to chatting with John and Paul with a flimsy excuse someone sent them to help or chat? And having a man build something on the roof? I DID miss that. What was it? What was built?

 

Henry was a prelude? Is he the Maestro’s Watcher like in LOGOPOLIS or a future incarnation or a past one like in PLANET OF THE SPIDERS? What is going on? He survives? The Maestro revives in Henry form?

 

Ruby and the Doctor dance on the street and create music? How? Magic? Toymaker residual magic again?

 

This sucks. This script sucks. This show sucks. This is the worst thing I’ve ever seen.

 

The good? Not much. Irwin Allen would love the red/orange shirt of the Doctor set against a day glow TARDIS and all sort of colors. It looks great. The Doc robbing the area of sound was a nice touch: maybe like an old TWLIGHT ZONE episode the sound should have stayed off far, far longer. No, that scene, also nice, made no sense. If this Maestro already ate all the music how does this affect them? It doesn’t really, for long.

 

This becomes what Moffat said all of DW is: the Doctor vs a Monster. One too powerful for him but oh, wait, he tries and almost succeeds and two humans somehow reach inside and find the musical chord or chords (?) to send the Maestro back to “hell”.

 

We also get a scene where the Doc shows Ruby the future ala PYRAMIDS OF MARS. It’s better in PYRAMIDS OF MARS.

 

Almost none of this works. At all. The Doc talking about himself being a grandfather and a father we’ve seen before in both RTD1 and Moffat. Susan is somewhere. Big deal. Shoreditch. Who cares? This is not only stupid but also, unlike SPACE BABIES, boring.

 

And worst of all: a totally obnoxious, ridiculous awful song and dance number that’s one of the worst numbers to grace the TV or movie screen. It is cringe worthy. The TARDIS doors dance?

 

It’s clear RTD has lost his touch, if his mind in the process. The man cannot write at all. This is the worst thing DW has ever put out and that includes A GOOD MAN GOES TO WAR, DAY OF THE DOCTOR, CRIMSON HORROR, STAR BEAST, and THE GIGGLE (btw why does the Doc call the Maestro the giggle?).

 

And we get more set up “mystery arcs”: “this one,” the Maestro says about Ruby, “This one is just wrong.”  Setting up Ruby is wrong. Is she the key to time? Gosh. And then we also get “they are coming” again. The Toymaker already said that about his Legion, which this powerful god (if the Maestro is a god, it’s a let down; they’re awful as a god and as a villain, too in the end). Defeated by a chord.

 

If the show goes on like this, I can see it quickly being cancelled.

 

This is a new Doctor Who: where things just happen, reasons be damned; nothing has to be explained; the moment is what counts: gimmick, music, color, effects, flash, a weird comment, a promise of future threat, lack of present threat, whimsy for whimsy sake, forced lightheartedness; and more shallow than the entire first 60 years (and that includes River, Amy, the Trial of a Time Lord, Time and the Rani, the War Doctor, the Fugitive Doctor, the death of Adric which is great and poor at the same time, Ace’s first story, Ace killing a pet, the Master killing a dog, the John Sim Master, Missy, cranky Doc 12, homophobic and sociopathic Doc 11, all the gay baiting from RTD and all the homophobicness from Moffat and the schizo Chibs era). Nothing is worse than this episode and SPACE BABIES but this episode is far worse.

 

DW is truly dead and in its place is DW: a flash in the pan fairy tale that has no rules, no logic, no moral fiber, no real material value whatsoever, no real message, and nothing. It’s just nothing.

 

It’s a total waste of talent (Ncuti is good). I like that the Doc changes outfits and often more than once in a story let alone from story to story. He looks great, he even acts like the Doctor here and there, despite, here saying he would never call himself a genius.

 

Oh, and hating music and eating it and not wanting it around, the Maestro calls a music battle against the Doctor. What? Is this RTD trying to do BRAIN OF MORBIUS? For that he would need a brain (of Morbius).

 

Next time? Is this GENESIS OF THE DALEKS 2?

 

The trailer to the next episode is not exactly gripping. Remember when RTD’s trailers were inspiring, scary, exciting, and just gave you the tingles for more and more DW. Yeah. This trailer doesn’t do that.

 

This DW is none of those things. It’s baby food (!) and bad TV. Really bad TV. I can’t imagine anyone liking this shit. Like last episode, this is total shit. More so. It makes no sense and goes nowhere.

 

Good premises are not enough. They HAVE to go somewhere. The climax needs to be important. We need to care about the situation and the world set up and the characters. THIS does NONE of that. I felt nothing, even less than during Matt Smith’s episodes (even the reveal that River is, in a huge talk fest, Amy and Rory’s daughter, born after they fucked on the TARDIS in transit).

 

Which is sad because I like these actors more than I liked or hated Karen Gillian as the lame Amy and I like Millie and Ncuti a lot and like his Doctor and her Ruby. They are personable, funny, and great looking and have a great rapport. I want to like what happens to them but when it’s this low in quality and this poorly executed, written and thought out, it’s difficult to like ANY of it. They’re great but not that great.

 

You can’t make a good show out of literal baby shit and a lack of music. Which is what the first two awful stories were about. RTD and DW need better ideas and maybe get back to the idea that the Doc cannot control where they end up and go back to a survival storyline along the entire season: lost in time and space sounds great right about now rather than the Doctor vs the gods. How long before Sutek shows up in the body of a muscular Egyptian with a light message about the Gaza strip?

 

DW has hit lows before but this is the all time low of low. It deserves, no it cries out to be cancelled. It needs to be cancelled. Or taken over by someone who knows how to write good science fiction, good adventure and action, good historicals and good TV. RTD knows none of those things. No more fans as show runner and in fact, no more show runners. Just get a great producer who can hire better writers guiding them along instead of writing himself.

 

No one gets hurt, no one faces repercussions, no results and no threat, no energy in this entire thing. It’s hopeless. It’s bad, it’s boring, campy and unfunny.

 

RTD is a huge disappointment. I hope this junk gets better. It’s very sad to see a once great show and character get this bad.  

Disney cancelled four good shows: TURNER AND HOOCH, DOOGIE, MIGHTY DUCKS: GAME CHANGERS and BIG SHOT. All four should still be on the air. THIS Doctor Who should not. Will it even survive so that we see the second season they are now shooting? It's THAT bad.