TroytlePower

The Woman Who Fell to Earth, the introduction to Jodie Whittaker’s take on Doctor Who, premiered yesterday, and (for my spoiler-free review) it was utterly fantastic!

I’ve not had enough time to process to really put together a coherent review, so I’ll just call out a few highlight notes (spoilers below):

• I dig the companions. They all feel like real, genuine, earnest, down to earth people, instead of the near gods that some other companions have been (The Girl Who Waited, The Impossible Girl, etc). I’m reminded of Donna Noble, except before she became the most important being in the entire universe. I hope that these people just stay good people on their adventure, instead of ascending.
• On the topic of the friends, the unexpected death of Grace really hit me hard. I don’t know why I didn’t see it coming since I had heard there were three companions this season and the Doctor immediately had four friends but… yeah, it hurt. I would not be sad to see an alternate timeline version of that character poke her head back in somewhere in episode seven or so.
• On to the Doctor! Jodie Whittaker is utterly and completely fantastic! I love the absent-mindedness of her dialog, I love that she’s a tinkerer, I love that she is immediately kind and empathetic… she is 100% The Doctor. And more than that, she embodies that character completely and immediately from her first frame, more than other regenerations have. I am totally in.
• The lack of a theme song or TARDIS (or end credits, thanks BBCA) was super off-putting, and really made this feel like something different. Obviously, we are going to get those components soon, but it reminded me of the start of Star Trek Discovery, which spends two episodes basically on a prequel story before the show actually kicks off. I think this works lovely as an introduction to the series, but I suspect we’ll get more of a feel for the day-in-day-out format of the new show next week.
• Finally, one last thought. Why did she have her friends hold on to all those pieces of the transporter at the end? Couldn’t that car battery have been sitting on the ground? Is there any chance that maybe, just maybe, she wanted to bring them along?