Doctor Who (2005): Series 11 Review

Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing about Doctor Who's 37th season, or series 11 if you're just counting the stories aired since it came back in 2005. Really they've could've drawn another line right here and called it Volume 3, Series 1 with how different the show is behind the scenes and on screen now. It's practically a spin-off of itself: the Star Trek: Discovery of Doctor Who, though I think this regeneration was necessary and the change didn't come a moment too soon.

This was the season that Jodie Whittaker took over from Peter Capaldi as the show's first madwoman in a box and Chris Chibnall took over as showrunner, so it was fairly monumental in that regards. But were the episodes anything spectacular themselves? If you've read my individual episode reviews you already know my answer to that, but I might as well say it again now.

I should also mention that I'm not going to shy away from dropping huge SPOILERS here, for everything from The Woman Who Fell to Earth to the season finale The Battle of Rancon Az Kolor Razkol Ab Kosor Ranschool As Kloplot... Resolution, and no doubt a few of the earlier episodes too.

Doctor Who (2005) - New Year's Day 2019: Resolution (Quick Review)

Episode:

851

|

Serial:

287

|

Writer:

Chris Chibnall

|

Air Date:

01-Jan-2019

---

Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, I hope you weren't looking forward to that Doctor Who series 11 review I promised, because this ain't that. I got distracted with other things and ran out of December to put it in. I believe I also mentioned that I might not be reviewing the New Year's special because I'd written about enough Doctor Who already, but that was before they revealed that this was going to be the only episode aired in all of 2019. How am I suppose to leave it out now? What sort of a monster would go from An Unearthly Child to the very latest season (skipping a year or ten along the way) and then stop exactly one episode before the end?

I kind of assumed that we were done with year-long breaks in between seasons now that the series has a different showrunner who's not trying to write Sherlock at the same time, but I guess that's just how the series is these days. The only difference is that in the Chris Chibnall era we get the one-off episode on New Year's Day instead of Christmas Day, because after thirteen consecutive Christmas specials they've used up every possible way of shoehorning Christmas into a Doctor Who story. Which means no more Christmasified opening titles! No opening titles at all in fact, for perhaps the third time ever in the series' history.

Resolution is also unique among Thirteenth Doctor stories as right now it's the first and only episode to allow anything major from an earlier season to return. Series 11 was very much about the new, with new actors, monsters, writers, a new visual effects house and a new composer, but this episode brings back director Wayne Yip! Also the antagonist might be a bit familiar too but I'll not spoil that here.

All my SPOILERS are safely contained below the next screencap, so continue at your own risk.