Resolution Review

Resolution

“This says we’re not back until 2020”

Story 287, Episode 851, 2019 New Year’s Day Special

Doctor: The Thirteenth Doctor

Companions: Ryan Sinclair, Yasmin Khan, Graham O’Brien

The Doctor takes on a lone scout Dalek on New Year’s Day, and the Ryan’s dad subplot finally gets some…resolution.

The Review

Aaron’s shock at Ryan calling Graham ‘gramps’ is pretty great (and probably layered, was Aaron’s father absent from his life too?)

Every Dalek episode that’s well received says ‘Doctor Who made the Daleks scary again!’. Daleks will be Daleks, it’s all about the quality of the story, and this is a good one. With how terribly the Chibnall era has been received by the online fan contingent, I’m not sure what more they’d want in this episode. It was a faced-past episode chasing down a Dalek, that actually featured a well-earned glimpse at the fierce Whittaker Doctor. Although not at Face the Raven level of terrifying, the steely Doctor is fine, but it’s clearly not in this Doctor’s DNA to be stone-cold Oncoming Storm. Yaz continues to be pretty unnecessary, but Ryan and Graham get good moments revolving around Ryan’s erstwhile Dad Aaron. Aaron is appropriately scolded, but given a chance at redemption. Ultimately, it’s his love for Ryan that saves him from falling into a supernova with the Dalek pupating him. Doctor Who folks!

The scout/reconnaissance Dalek’s rebuilt farm

Now, there is some bad. The archaeologist budding couple Mitch and Lynn have too long of a scene discussing their relationship. Mitch doesn’t do much, but Lynn is quite good as the Dalek puppet. There is a completely unnecessary framing story about the Daleks’ body being cut in three pieces, scattered to the ends of the earth, guarded by generations of protectors. Once the Dalek is awoken under Sheffield it teleports its pieces together and that’s it. Completely unneeded. Also, I guess Daleks aren’t public knowledge, The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End got erased by the cracks in the world, and they were barely around in Doomsday. Some of the cutting was bad, but I’ll blame that on BBC America’s bizarre ad break locations. It was fun to see the TARDIS shields in action, straight out of The Parting of the Ways with a Dalek trying to shoot the Doctor behind them. This episode was a lot closer to the successful episodes of previous seasons, but the shaky foundation means it can’t rise to the character-driven heights of previous such episodes.

For the only outing of 2019 (unless we return to a Christmas special), Resolution is fun but can’t erase the characterization failures of the rest of Series 11.

8.3/10 UNIT getting temporarily closed down because of financial disagreements with the United Kingdom is just too real. Some kind of a metaphor.

Sliding into 2019 like