Why Chibnall Doesn't Work: The Ghost Monument 

What annoys me is that they get rescued by complete luck. The doctor basically brought her companions to their inevitable death, and she dosent care or apologize. This happens quite too often that they are all safe because of dumb luck, not because the doctor is a space genius

The best reaction to finding out that the TARDIS translates for it's occupants was Donna's when she instantly wondered what would happen if she spoke Latin while in Pompeii and said to a stall holder "veni vidi vici".

Proper "quippy dialogue" Yaz, "I'm confused, are you confused?" Ryan, "Proper confused" Graham "Right! Got it!" while arching an eyebrow

My overwhelming thought when watching the Chibnal era is... Darn I wish we had more than one series with Bill.

The fact that they seem to have given the Chibnall Era a huge budget in comparison to the rest of the show really highlights that they're trying to compensate for the lack of quality writing by distracting us with fancy visuals, when if anything that's the exact opposite of what Doctor Who should be.

What saddens me so much is how Capaldi was given such a rough hand by the BBC during his run when he was arguably one of the best actors to have ever played the Doctor, from the title sequences down to special FX, but for some reason Whitaker's Doctor has gotten completely undivided attention in so many aspects that feel completely undeserved. I know that it's probably to try and mask the unbearably poor writing but man I won't forgive the BBC (and Moffat too to am extent) for nearly purposefully ruining Capaldis run in so many ways.

the thirteen asking questions thing really gets me because twelve was always asking questions too, but with him it felt more like a teacher or professor (heh) either thinking aloud or even guiding you through to an answer, like a discussion? maybe it was in the delivery or just terrible dialogue, but it’s one of 13’s quirks that really does my head in by comparison

I think another issue with this episode simply relates to how it transitions from The Woman Who Fell to Earth. I think that the ending of the previous episode didn't really make sense. Grace's funeral would have taken weeks to organise, and The Doctor just sat around and waited until Yaz told her to buy some new clothes, and only THEN decided to build the teleport. Plus, The Doctor hates funerals and goodbyes. 13 is later shown to even be reluctant to stay for dinner (except for when she's totally cool with it). The end of TWWFTE just drags a lot, and it doesn't really excite you for the next episode beyond "oh they're in space. How will they get out of thiiis?" I think that the teleport scene should have taken place as part of the events of the episode, BEFORE the funeral - maybe even have The Doctor build the TARDIS tracking equipment while building her screwdriver (e.g. "This would be so much easier with my TARDIS... The signal's not even on Earth. We can't risk going to get it until Tim Shaw's gone."). This would add more conflict to the characters of Graham and Ryan, and actually add to the urgency of reaching the end of the race for our main characters. "We have to get back to Earth in time for Grace's funeral! She died helping YOU!". In addition, it provides viewers a character motivation to watch this episode. It's not just that the Fam are stranded in space - it's that they are stranded in space AND THEY NEED TO GET BACK ASAP. In addition, The Doctor would still have her tatty Capaldi clothes on, which is a) cool, and b) allows us to finally have another TARDIS wardrobe scene, rather than just The Doctor going shopping with Yaz's money. It also clears up any plot holes about a random historical figure's sunglasses being in the pocket of her brand new and completely human coat which doesn't have pockets that are bigger on the inside. All of the other things you suggest in this video, like putting Ryan with The Doctor, and Yaz and Graham together, along with keeping the teams separate would also help keep the narrative tension going. Splitting the teams allows the audience to know something the characters don't, so let's say the alien with Ryan and The Doctor does something that endangers the other team in order for them to get ahead - they don't know that they could be hurting Graham and Yaz, and then we can see the impact on Graham and Yaz and how they respond, which could be used to grow character. Maybe Graham gets injured and the female alien suggests leaving him behind to save time, so Yaz stands up to her. There are so many possibilities. The Chibnall era is an era of good concepts completely squandered by lazy writing, unimaginative direction, and an obvious lack of trust in the intelligence of the audience he is writing for.

Chibnall's jokes really feel like some Family Guy skit: "Heh heh, this is even wackier than that time I was partying with Pythagoras."

The cinematography alone made watching the newer episodes fucking unbearable, they don't seem to have any grasp of how to use a camera angle to tell a story, they only know how to make it "look cool and gritty and realistic"

This isn't Doctor Who. This is an incompetent Chibnall, making his awful fan made version, with a cosplay Doctor, played by a face pulling Whittaker and filled with actors who can barely speak, let alone act.

All their reactions to being on an alien planet are absolute s**t. Like Martha's reaction to being on the moon was so much more realistic, in Smith and Jones.

Yaz (and others) get exposed to the vacuum of space for a time and soon get over their near death experience, yet when Yaz gets captured by the Kasaavin, on her return she is all teary eyed and saying "I thought I was dead", in shock for quite a while. I wish the writers would make up their mind about the character of these people.

Watching pretty much any episode of the RTD era is just so much more entertaining compared to fucking anything from Chibnall. It's just way tighter, so much less clunky exposition, way more interesting characters and their dynamics with each other, the way the episodes are shot. The pacing, editing, music, villains. Just fucking everything. The difference in quality is so disappointing.

27:15 yeah I think it could’ve made a more interesting character if Graham was liberated since his cancer scare so he genuinely doesn’t fear death anymore (to an extent), but obviously Chibnall couldn’t do that because they had to expand on his only ‘personality trait’

Maybe Chibnall was afraid BBC will wipe his episodes, and they will go missing, apart from the audio, so he made it fully friendly to listeners.

If you want to know why there's a lack of conflict between the companions, it's because it is Chibnall's philosophy for the show, as opposed to some kind of writing mistake or laziness. There's an interview with The AV Club for Series 12 where he asked a couple of times about tension between the characters, and he always bats it away, but this section in particular is very telling to me: "AVC: Will that lead to a clash with The Doctor, or the rest of the team? CC: I wouldn’t necessarily say that there’ll be clashes or risks between the companions. There are different approaches in different stories. But what I come back to is, this is an incredibly strong friendship group that they can have differences of opinion, but it’s not like there’s going to be some spectacular fallings out among this group. No, I wouldn’t want to lead you down any false trails." To me this is the issue, the whole thing is fundamentally flawed by design, the show doesn't want to explore stuff like this, as a rule. It feels like "strong friendship group" is written on a whiteboard at BBC Wales and that's about as far as all their relationships go.

This planet feels like the first stage of the space race, not the last. I could fuckin win this thing.

I think the 'Big Finish' style is intentional, given Chris has said he's targeting a Netflix audience; one that's gonna be say on their phones, iplayer on in the background. But...that's not Who's audience? At all? It's the producer work of this era which is fucked to me, even if the writing is lackluster too.

Heh - I actually thought the Title Sequence introduced in The Snowmen was arguably the most enjoyable, as it looked neat and was a callback to like 3 Classic Title Sequences

Ryan, graham and yaz feel feel like a bunch of yes men at times blending into one character never having any sense of agency or real impacting the story in a significant way.

18:19 As a first year film student, we've done framing better than this. That's not a boast on how good we are, it's to show how a big budget production can be on par with some 16 year olds messing about.

The only good thing about that episode is the name as The Ghost Monument is the most beautiful description of the Tardis I’ve ever heard and sums up it’s reputation/legacy (idfk 🤷🏼) perfectly.

Well... I can understand their lack of reaction to the "alienness" of it all because, well, it's so earth like that well, it's totally earth like, earth looking place, earth looking people, nothing to react to actually

Making Chibnall bald in the thumbnail was a powermove ✨

"Whilst the Woman who fell to Earth had been a decent' if rather uninspired start" -Reads title again -Oh... Oh no...

UPDATE: So BBC randomly blocked Part 3.5. Fun. I'm currently disputing it. Alright well hopefully this works. I've had to split the video into two parts in order to avoid getting blocked by the BBC.

Such a shame Chibnall's gay representation is so lazy and forgettable and kinda cringey, still longing for the day it's done well and fairly and realistically

The main thing I keep saying Chibby needs to understand is that a bigger budget doesn't instantly mean it's better.

This best thing about this era's writing is that it makes me realise how easy the older scripts made it look.

So she had nothing in her pockets, but then they added a line where she put stuff in her pockets, including an item she couldn't POSSIBLY have on her unless she already had those sunglasses in 12's old tattered clothes... a pair of Sunglasses is giving me a headache

it's funny that Chibnall doesn't really care for Big Finish yet still is setting them up for saving the Thirteenth Doctor

By having the doctor just question everything makes her seem less competent. They are meant to have the answers and when they don’t you know something is wrong

"What's exciting here is the storytelling opportunities it opens up" Ah. Yes. About those.

The whole "galactic race" thing is fun but not unique. It's the premise of the fifth Doctor episode Enlightenment, and at least in that episode all the stores ships were disguised as sailing ships, adding another fun twist. Also it was part of the turlough arc

We all know Chibnall / Whittaker _Doctor Who,_ and the eponymous Doctor played by Whittaker, _doesn’t work._ But you’re among the first to truly embark on a detailed episode by episode, scene by scene multi-video analysis of _why,_ right down to the show’s dialogue, line delivery and costume choices. But in response, the BBC have you copyright struck / blocked?? _They ought to be taking notes off of these!!!_

Highly agree with the cinematography issue. It does not hold the same Doctor who campiness as the previous seasons. It's like it's trying to be a CW show. Also, the recent New Year's special was filmed like a Bond movie or like a really poor action movie. Really takes you out out of the experience.

Capaldi's theme was awesome!!!

Part 3.5 is up!

I guess the one good thing about Chinballs' Doctor Who being shite, is that we get semi-consistent Jack Wolf videos.

U should talk about how the doctor always always always fucks up. Even in this episode. She accidentally teleported everyone into space and someone else had to save them. She literally killed them if the extras werent there.

Biggest budget Who has ever had... One Desert, a tent, no alien make up or interesting costume design.

I get really annoyed at some whotubers who applaud the series completely or hate on it as lefty trash. This is a fairly balanced and critical look on it, thank you.

I've just realized I saw part 3.5 before part 3. Not sure how that happened. And Capaldi's theme had one good thing. The bells. Doctor Who requires more clanging in it's music, it nearly always sounds good for exciting action scenes. And the joke about the sunglasses is no "Janis Joplin gave me that coat."

older episodes of dr who: *hiden messageing hidden very well* chibnal dr who: " YO ENVIROMENTENTAL ISHUES, HEY YOU DID YOU GET THE MESAGE YET?"

I still don't know why they got the guy who made that fanmade sequence, but ended up producing a shitty looking knockoff of it lol

Big Finish writing is 100X better writing than Chibnall's.

What can I say? They're nothing without an audience *looks at camera, wink, wink* Heaven Sent reference.

I liked the pacing of The Ghost Monument, them sleeping, it felt longer, like the characters experienced many days, instead of the usual haphazardly running intense everything goed boom within 40 minutes. It felt like a stamina race, not a running race. I thought that was unique and maybe a new element for a new show and new Doctor. But it wasn't. It was a fluke of editing and bad pacing and not something intentional, just bad writing.

An interesting criticism I think you glossed over about the gay rep in the show is that because it's pretty much only included casually from side characters who usually end up being killed to big up the bad guy, the Chibnall era has the highest LGBT death count in the history of the show. Something tells me that's not the kind of representation that many LGBT people would appreciate.

Lol, that visual big finish thing made so much sense. Just imagine what’s going on instead of watching it.

I know opinions is opinions, but how anyone can fail to see these screaming deficiencies in Chibnall's run is just beyond me. "Nah, it's all coz you're a sexist." Oh, do eff off.

I interpreted the side characters not thinking of themselves as human as them being descended from humans but identifying entirely with the planets they were from, as a way of showing how humanity diverges in the far future. It actually seemed pretty cool at the time and fit with what the 9th Doctor tells us about humans mixing with other species and no longer caring about pure homo sapien-ness but I have no idea of that was Chibnall's intention.

Whittaker sounds like mrs tweedy querulously berating her husband for the chickens being organised. It plumbs new depths of utter contemptibility.

The titles look and sound great. I'll give them that.

The Doctor: Asking every question in the episode The Audience: 21:01

I hate that Chibs acts like there have never been women or black people in Doctor Who before and if you think Yaz is boring it's because you're racist which is just a writing cop out. Martha Jones was an actual character, she had motivations, she had an arc, and she was all around an actual character instead of just a plot device.

This really is a audio drama

This really highlights just how good the Donna arch was

Still think the 10th Doctors intro theme is the best, gets me so excited to watch episodes I've seen many times over

Okay just got to say I disagree on the titles note. Capaldi's is my absolute favorite DW opening Whittaker's just looks like a toilet flushing

Replace Chibnall with a true lifelong Doctor Who fan who has watched all of the classic series, understood the themes and who is actually competant. Please BBC. We need this.

It was this that i decided the series wasn't going to get better and i dropped it. My respect for the people who sat through the whole season.

I'd actually argue against you that the series 1-4 intro aged way worse than the series 5-6 intro. Series 7 intro gets waaaaaay too much hate. Series 8-10 intro is awesome and lets be real...no one noticed the audio sync. You saw the reddit post. Plus, the series 8-10 intros also have awesome versions like the christmas ones and the guitar one.

"The gossip I picked up" "Can we have the lights and siren on?" "No! All my stuff's on there!" "Not any more!" "Actually turned out to be a training camp for the Quiston Calcium Assassins." "The Woolly Rebellion. In 193 years, there's a total renegotiation of the sheep-human relationship. Utter bloodbath." While so much humour falls flat, lines like the above are ones that I've ALMOST found funny - I've WANTED to laugh at them, there's humour in there somewhere. But something has held me back. When I felt a laugh rising, it just sank back down again. It's like the delivery is just about there but the writing holds it back, or vice versa, I'm not entirely sure, but something crucial doesn't work. I think the only things I found genuinely funny in the series were Ryan thinking Rosa Parks was the first black woman to drive a bus, and just about everything King James says in his introductory scene in "Witchfinders". But - alas - the best humour comes from the likes of "Arachnids" and everything else in "Witchfinders", which aren't meant to be funny but are.

ive been looking forward to this for so long!! thanks for making my shit day sm better!!

Ehhhhhh "forced diversity" has always struck me as a pretty hollow criticism considering how we don't expect a hetero character's orientation to be a substantial part of their character the same way we do for lgbt ones. Nobody would have gone "huh, that was kinda forced" if a male presenting alien had said "my wife died."

It is really annoying how this version of the Doctor is not that keen on saving the lives of her companions?

Hey jack, for the flesh eating microbes bit, i think the best example to show how DW did this so well in the past was The Web Planet 1965, there was a small puddle of acid that was used as a plot device and for tension fairly early in the arc. Shown first, then used as a danger point in the next part.

Because of his dialog and reactions to aliens I'm convinced Graham is the doctor using a pocket watch

The part where you showed a clip from the episode 'Fires Of Pompeii' and mentioned the difficult choices that come with being the Doctor I personally could have been chosen better by changing it for the clip where David Tennant says "Donna, it's Pompeii or the world"

Every single line delivery from Jodie feels wrong probably due to the direction as well. With another doctor those insults would be delivered more sarcastically whilst they still try to help.

On my Doctor who rewatch marathon, that next time trailer for Tsuranga conundrum is the dullest trailer I've ever seen. I actually laughed loud and asked how the hell was that meant to get anyone excited.... and it was an actual dull episode, maybe the dullest episode of Doctor who I've ever seen (aside from maybe the pting). This episode is a contender, but at least there were locations to go to, not dull white corridors.

"and it looks like south africa" Going to be honest when I first watched it I thought it was a combination of a welsh quarry, a sandpit and some sets.

Chibnall has managed to give us three of the dullest companions to ever grace the show. He has also relied heavily on locations and existing sets and rather than having a set designer he's got an art director. The TARDIS reveal, should have made up for an underwhelming episode, but it just reflected everything that had gone before. It just looked like three ideas stuck together, the crystals, metallic walls and console that just didn't really fit together, and the interior felt so impersonal. Later there was the addition of some rather naff rostra to try and make it look more impressive which has only made it look even more 'set like'.

This was last the episode where I still had some hope left for the show. After the TARDIS dematerializes at the end, it was all downhill from there.

Awesome! I've been waiting for this.

Thank you for mentioning the awful direction and camera work, I'm so sick of hearing "best Doctor Who has ever looked"

Some people like nerdorotic dont like chibnalls era (i do) and they express it in a terrible way. you do it in a perfect way.

finally someone has mentioned the shit cinematography

I like jack wolf, because they aren't really a "Doctor Who Coderivative", like he doesn't care that there is a female doctor, he doesn't care that these series were aiming to be a little more "woke" (for lack of better term), he doesn't dislike Jodie Whitaker he dislike the 13th doctor. that's why I like jack wolf.

"Pythagoras in sunglasses. How Hila-" ad break

I agree with Critical Drinker. The new companions are a bunch of yes men

If given the chance to be a show runner on Doctor Who, I'd jump at the chance. I haven't watched the show since 10 regenerated. And I need to go back and watch 11 and 12. But I decided to check out 13 for a few episodes. And it was terrible. I think show runners need to be more casual fans than diehard fans (as Chibnall is supposedly) diehard fans often put their own story needs first than thinking of the general audience and other fans. Hence why I'd love to be the show runner or a show runner on Who. The balance of what I'd want to see and what the general audiences and other fans need, in terms of story. Would be put first and thus the show would be better as a result. Plus I have a great story idea that would fix all of the problems from Chibnall and his run. And bring in a new Doctor and companions that would be refreshing for the show, plus more Aliens, Adventures and of course less time spent of earth. Of course everyone says they would make a great show runner, not wanting to put themselves down. But honestly I think anyone would show run Who better than Chibnall. Damn even my 13-year-old nephew would make a better show runner and he don't like Who.

Your analyses are brilliant. I've been following your videos and feel your insights are a fresh facet to the body of intellectual dissection of this show that I've loved since the 70s. Thank you for not trying to be snarky for snark's sake. It gives your videos an added honesty.

You missed a beauty. "Flesh-eating bacteria....millions of them." In a stream of flowing water (ie: none at all in practical terms). Keep up the good work, though. X

Downloaded as mp4 online for when I have time to watch. I won't miss this!

Once we know the Ghost mountain is the TRADIS all the tension evaporates. Since we already know all the series regulars are going to survive.

I think you've actually figured out where Chibnall belongs.... On the radio!

It speaks volumes about the overall lack of episode quality that so much is said about the title sequence.

Great video man. While I disagree with some points, it was a really good review. I also think the score was great in this episode too.

LMFAO That thumbnail

Imo the new title theme is such a downgrade, i much prefer the capaldi version

Wow, you make a really good point with the audio-style directing, that might honestly be why I enjoyed S11 so much more than the later seasons, I mostly listened to it the first time, and when I rewatch them I usually listen to them as background audio rather than a direct watching experience, and that works quite well with Chibnall’s writing. I still prefer TV doctor who, but that has inspired me to give the Audio dramas a go.

I was hugely disappointed by the aliens being "human" in appearance throughout the season due to tardis shenanigans. Just lazy and removes a cool Sci fi element

things that very much annoy me about chibnall area but i'm no good at explaining: 1) 3 companions is too many 2) Yaz being a police officer is never utilised, e.g when they're on earth she could get them into places by pretending she's investigating. 3) The doctor getting used to being a woman again is never used. Like, she's been a man since 1963- 4) How the fuck did Chinball, who wrote for Torchwood and therefore would know Jack Harkness, manage to make him boring?? John Barrowman wanted to come back to dw for years, sucks it had to be in chibnall's era.

10:45 I can't lie, "I was a hologram once" is actually pretty funny

This was a really good analysis. Nicely done.

Omg somebody finally says it. She cant stop asking questions after questions. She supposed to be the smartest in the room. The writer clearly wrote her as a companion cuz shes a girl. They dont know how to write a female doctor.

I can't get over that thumbnail... 🤣🤣🤣