Overview of Chris Chibnall's Work on Doctor Who & Torchwood

all right let's take a look [Music] Doctor Who time and we are getting ever closer to the premiere of series 11 the debut of the 13th doctor and the beginning of the Chibnall era and people have been asking me for a while what I think about this cuz I put out my initial impressions of when ship Noah was first announced but I didn't have a ton to say about it then and even as time has gone on I haven't had a particularly deep dive because looking at the man's work it's hard to judge I think it can be very difficult whenever you're dealing with a writer who you can't really tell looking up their stuff that they were putting their own stamp on the material like you look at Moffat scripts back during the Russell T Davies era and you go oh you can see the guy's fingerprints all over this I didn't have enough of a sense of Chibnall as a writer to really know looking at the episodes of Doctor Who that he had done if these were really true to him as a writer or were these more work-for-hire work on assignments were these storylines he was basically given and then did the best he could with or were they things he really cared about now my understanding at this point of how much of the writing process worked with with Doctor Who under both Davies and Moffat I think a little more so with Moffat though was that oftentimes ideas would get pitched and section out and then assigned to writers so oftentimes writers who weren't saying Moffat themselves or like really huge names like say Neil Gaiman they are the writers often weren't you know doing an idea that was truly original from them they were given an idea and then did the best that they could with it and from what I can tell that was the case for most if not all of chip Noel's Doctor Who episodes so again it made things difficult to judge so what I've decided to do is I'm gonna take a look at all of his work within the Doctor Who universe which means I'm also gonna look at his work on Torchwood because he actually was a pretty seminal and you know forward pushing voice in Torchwood he wrote a lot of the episodes of the first two series of that and a lot of the important ones as well especially in that second season so I'm gonna be taking a look at all this and I thought initially that I was gonna rank them you know the way I have with Davies and with Moffat but it doesn't feel right at this point to be ranking this whole instead I'm gonna go through these chronologically in order of airing and just sort of tackle them one at a time and then sort of give my final thoughts at the end so let's look back on Chris Chibnall work to date on Doctor Who related material and we kick things off with Torchwood and the episode day one and this has hey bad start because I don't know about anybody else I don't hear a tone of people talking great things about the stuff so but I hate this episode so much like to the point that I seriously considered not bothering watching the third episode I hated almost everything about this so in case you've been oh it's been a while since you are Short's wood or if you haven't watched Torchwood at all this is the second episode of the first series of Torchwood it is Gwen Cooper who's sort of the new recruit her first day on the job which is why it's called day one and so the team is dealing with basically a sex demon I mean it's an alien but it might as well be its possessing people it's driven by a strong sexual need and basically this entire episode felt like the show beating you over the head with look how mature we are of course mature in the most superficial possible sense and that there's a lot of sex and people swear and it's more violent than Doctor Who and somehow this juvenile version of maturity is something that we're supposed to be taking seriously but it is just so empty and Hollow and meaningless and like I said completely beating you over the head stuff that does not feel like it's coming out of the story it's just shove as much adult material as possible into this episode let's show people that this is different from the main show and they did show that it was different they showed that it was crap now I I say that as if it's a blanket statement that all towards food is crap it's not Torchwood can't be really good but man this Jim doll is lucky that I didn't realize he wrote this episode way back when he was first announced to be taking over Doctor Who I would've been way more pessimistic at the time but how will I think about it now well we'll see because let's see how he picked up if he got better next episode from Jim gnaw on Torchwood is cyber woman now this it's better than day one except almost anything is better than day one slamming my finger in a car door is better than day one but it's not great and the frustrating thing about this one is the core idea of it is really good so what we find out in this one is that one of the members of the Torchwood staff basically the most innocuous of the me Anto we find out that his girlfriend was partially but not fully cyber converted during the Cyberman invasion during the events of army of ghosts and doomsday over on Doctor Who now his girlfriend the conversion was not complete so she's kind of partway there and he's been taking care of her and trying to figure out a way to try and reverse this and this is the episode where the rest of the team discovers that he's been housing this thing in their base of operations and you know everything just goes wrong so like that core idea is pretty good there's two major problems with it though the first is that it's too early in the series this is the fourth episode of the first series and to be blunt about it at the time it happened I didn't know Ianto enough to have this feel like a betrayal the way that it's supposed to the way that feels to the other characters because they knew him a heck of a lot better than I did he had been a more on character and a more innocuous character I'm not saying I needed him to be front and center prior to this you could have it be that trusty background character but it needed to have been longer before they tried to do a rug pull with them to make a comparison to say Buffy the Vampire Slayer we it wasn't until the second season of that show that we got kind of a rug pull in regards to Giles who was the stodgy exposition you know solid rock knowledgeable and moral rock of the show and then in the second season we find out oh he's got some nasty history and it works there because we had a whole season of just being oh we think we know this guy and then finding out we don't four episodes in that doesn't work so that's the first major problem the second one is the cyber woman herself and honestly largely I think it's a problem with design again I'm gonna chalk this up to the real superficial mature nature of Torchwood especially in those early years and she just looks goofy and stupid and sexualized in a bizarre way I think it would have been so much more disturbing and so much more an indictment of Ianto and his frame of mind if she didn't look mostly human if she basically looked like a Cyberman but he was still referring to her by her human name and still caring for and taeheon trying to take care of her like she was still human but she didn't she looked almost completely converted I think that would have worked so much better than this cheesy weird and I again it's been a long time since I've checked out other people's reactions to Torchwood but I feel like the whole cyber woman punching a pterodactyl moment was heavily mocked and it should have been yeah so step up from day one but still this is not clicking yet next episode written by Chibnall for Torchwood countryside now we're starting to get decent this was one of the episodes the hatch got me continuing to watch Torchwood because I was really really on the fence up to this episode I figured I was probably gonna finish the first series but I also thought I'm not gonna watch any more after this but then this episode happened and again for folks who have more Torchwood the Torchwood team goes out into the country and they are investigating just brutality horrible brutal murders that and the reason they're there is because it's so bad they're pretty sure that it's alien involvement it's the fault of the rift which is you know what they keep an eye on and as it goes along we find out no this is not aliens it's not extraterrestrials it's just people really really sick people and that was and that this was an instance where this was a rug pool that did work and it's been only times as I've seen to my memory I did call it a little bit before the reveal but not way in advance to the point that it totally wrecked the the reveal or the episode but even sort of realizing where it was going it still worked because it it kind of goes against what the show have been presented as being about as a whole up to that point and we're about halfway through the first series by now so this is a good time to try and pull rug pools as opposed to only episode four so what you've got is you've got to show that head every episode has been about extraterrestrials every single episode exactly how it's going on it varies but that's always what they're dealing with so when they go in to deal with something and it's not that it's like oh oh that's right for all the hail Ian's the show up on earth people are kind of terrible or can be oh yeah that's right isn't it and it was well delivered it was it was fittingly brutal and this this first season had and I think several woman's a really good example this had a difficult time balancing what were frankly campy elements and it's more serious mindedness when the show eventually got a handle on being more serious that is generally when it was better as a show and I feel like this was possibly the first episode that it felt like the entire episode was properly serious but they're like tiny moments of levity tiny jokes but there's nothing about the scenario that's funny there's nothing about the imagery that you would laugh at and this I feel like was where we started to see what Torchwood can be when it was done properly with it with the mood that worked for it so this was the first piece of notably strong writing from Chibnall in the Doctor Who universe so moving it along we've got the end of days which is the series finale for the first series of Torchwood and it is pretty good I this one I actually had to go back and rewatch I had to reassess it because unfortunately for me the problem was I had I came back I didn't watch Torchwood as it airs I came back to it after you know I think I've gotten through if not series four definitely series three of Doctor Who which meant that I knew jack came back and hooked up with doctor again which is all stuff that happens after the end of series 1 of Torchwood and knowing that Jack survives this kind of takes the wind out of the sails of the story a bit but that's not the fault of this episode that's my meta knowledge when I watched it for the first time but it is an escalation of what has gone on that fits and it feels appropriate and it feeds into Jack's immortality which is as much of a curse as it is a blessing and that is played really well and the way that the villain sort of gets the the characters to do what he wants them to do in order to free this base it's basically a death God from the rift it's um it's it's a pretty harrowing and exhilarating episode I think it's possible that they over said would like the design of Abaddon I think it's you know between the limitations of the CGI budget and just the idea of this huge thing that just gonna lumber over Cardiff then again the idea that anything that falls in its shadow just drops dead that's kind of cool so maybe they guess it kind of balances on that point so while it's not perfect by any means it it is a solid it is a solid finale episode it is large scale it is impactful it is rooted in the characters as far as where it goes and the emotional beats it hits and how it resolves everything so again pretty solid stuff from chip know we're gonna move off of Torchwood to get onto his first piece of Doctor Who writing 42 and 42 while it is better than Sleep No More I tend to think of the two episodes in conjunction with each other which is that the gimmick doesn't really do anything to elevate the material in the case of Sleep No More which juvenile didn't write I'm just using as a point of reference that had first-person perspective gimmick you know the found-footage gimmick this has a real time gimmick and it and it is a gimmick it you know the the characters are theoretically you know where they're working against the clock and the clock is counting down in real time but it doesn't feel substantively different from any other Doctor Who race against the clocks in are the doctor races against the clock a lot in a lot of stories having the clock actually be to the second accurate for a tick down actually doesn't add a heck of a lot so if we strip the gimmick out because it is just a gimmick it doesn't really add anything to the story it doesn't detract either but it doesn't add anything so it was an especially weird thing to effectively name the episode after and it I suppose is also possibly a hitchhikers guide reference except that for an episode with this tone in this mood this is not the episode to be making hitchhikers guide references and but if we look at the rest of it it's interesting in an odd way and you know what maybe the gimmick was somewhat detrimental it almost feels a little bit rushed I feel like something with because the the creature monster kind of thing going on in this is not all that dissimilar in terms of core visual concept from the empty child but a big part of what worked with the empty child was that was a two-part story that had room to breathe and you go stretches without seeing it and it wasn't breathing down your neck so then when it showed up again you're like oh crap this one because it is only one episode and it is so fast-paced it feels like the thing is always there and in a way that kind of diminishes its threat to a certain extent I feel which is a shame because there is strong stuff in this Tennant gives a fantastic performance in this one and and there is you know some really interesting ideas in terms of the the messaging going on sort of the environmental messaging that's that's at the heart of this so it has some elements that work but it doesn't quite come together it's also got some elements that are goofy like God like the doors being opened by pub quiz answers which it's not the worst idea I've ever heard but again feels gimmicky and unnecessary and a little bit dumb next up we got to get back to Torchwood Torchwood series to the last series that Chibnall himself worked on and we got to talk about Kiss Kiss Bang Bang god I love this episode I love this episode of Torchwood Oh much and unfortunately a lot of ways that hurt the series because I saw this episode and I thought this is what I wanted from Torchwood yes this series is gonna be everything I wanted the per series to be and it wasn't and series 2 was pretty much as uneven as series 1 was not in all the same ways but it kind of yo-yoed up and down about as much but this first episode is great so Jack's back he's with his team that hasn't seen him for a while he's getting back in the saddle and James Marsters spike buddy from Buffy is on this episode and he and Captain Jack make out and yes you better believe that's the greatness friggin thing ever and just the feeling the vibe in what this episode also has to a certain degree and it's just enough of it it's a sense of fun because that was always one of my big issues with Torchwood conceptually as a show is it took Jack Harkness who was a character initially kind of defined by his swashbuckling devil-may-care charm and made him really broody and I'm not saying they didn't narrative ly justify it I get why he is that way but I don't think he be I don't think he's as fun as I care I don't I don't enjoy watching him as much when he's broody and mopey but I feel like this episode is one of the ones that finds the balance between he's still charming he's still fun to be around he's still fun to watch but he's also kind of damaged whereas the way that series one tried to bring in fun was you know superficial adult fun you know the day one crap but this episode really does feel like it because it had allows Jack to give that winning smile to be just fun to be around and to have her moment you have his moments with with James Marsters and at the same time not feel like he's been softened not feel like he's over his damaged so it this was a really wonderful balance of the elements that actually work on Torchwood and I think it's far as single episodes go I think it I would argue it's the best episode of the entire show and so from that lofty place we can only kind of go down not hugely though I'm kind of gonna talk about three episodes in a row because it's basically the three partners that make up the what I would consider to be the finale of series 2 of Torchwood and that is adrift fragments and exit wounds now there are things that work hearing things that don't a bit like end of days it hits the character notes right it hits the emotional notes right especially for the core cast and you know with Jack and everything that he gets poked through that second one fragments especially we got you know a deeper look at some of the background and some of the origins of some of these characters and I think that was really important because some of them are dead by the end of this and if we didn't take the extra time to be sure we zeroed in on the connections between them and the humanity of them and the history of them as people not just you know members of this team then the deaths of some of them and that very last episode would not have been as impactful as in fact they are at the same time there are a couple of problems as well I'm not a huge fan of the villain of this the character of gray I don't like I don't like his background I don't like his motivation I consider them to be cliched and kind of trite I don't feel like the fact that he is Jack's brother feels like it means anything it just kind of is and it said like okay so it's his brother that old chestnut like finding out that somebody is actually somebody's a relative at this point I just think that's a twist that very rarely means anything anymore and as far as his motivation like this is a guy I don't know how old he's supposed to be but he's a guy who blames his brother because of something that happened to him when he was very very young and like Jack wasn't able to protect him Jack didn't actively do anything Jack lost track of him in an emergency trying to get him out he let go of his hand for a second and lost him didn't mean to didn't intend to and certainly did not do to this guy all this that happened to him as a result of him getting captured by these horrendous creatures but he's gonna blame him anyway and I just I almost never buy that I hated when they pulled that kind of crap motivation for friggin Blofeld inspector one of the many reasons I hated that movie so like I just I'm not saying that it's impossible for me to believe that there are people who can't let a childhood issue go to the extent that they would basically devote the entire rest of their life to making the person they hold responsible pay for it I could buy that I've seen enough stuff in my life that I could buy that that that's possible but it's not interesting it's not it's it's a very superficial motivation I mean it I just I almost never buy it and I didn't really buy it here so unfortunately the falldown of the of these three episodes is the villain doesn't really work for me but the main cast though is all working and the progression is working and the impact of the villain is having on the story in the main cast that's all work is just the villain himself as a character not as a plot function as a plot function he's fine but as a character I just I don't buy him maybe part of its the the actor as well maybe a better actor could have sold it in a way that this guy didn't cuz I just felt like I was getting nothing often well that wraps up Chibnall Torchwood work so we've got a couple more Doctor Who's to talk about we've got the site Lorien two-parter the hungry earth and cold blood so this is a pretty solid episode it's not phenomenal but it remains true to the heart of the original concept of the Silurians from classic who not just in terms of what they are and that but also in terms of what tends to happen to them if you if you've never seen classic air Seiler Ian episodes the the trend the the first of all you have to realize the Silurians have a legitimate claim to the planet they were here first and then beyond that they just there's always an attempt at peace and it never works and they end up getting wiped out now in this case they finally don't don't get wiped out but you are still feeling the recurrence of God we were so close to finally dealing with this and again they just the salary's cannot catch a break and i feel like that was well captured in the in this and in terms of the death of worry the the death that at least for a little while stuck that was pretty well handled it wasn't especially well integrated as an element of the of this story didn't feel like a like it was complement like it was complementing what the story had been doing it felt kind of tacked on at the end but it still worked still worked for what it was and you know I like the star-lords I like the visualization of them I like the concept behind them and how they their society appears to work and and all of that so I do enjoy this episode again it's not phenomenal but as far as revival of classic era creatures go it's a pretty decent one not great but good next up dinosaurs on a spaceship I actually really like this episode I think it's a lot of fun I know a lot of people don't I I think they just consider it too silly which I mean I can get there are times that I do feel doctor who gets too silly for its own good I do and I do enjoy this one though I like the adventure vibe of it I like the I there there's probably too many of them but I do like the supporting cast and you know we've got a Egyptian queen and a big-game hunter you know people who obviously have a history with the doctor we've got Rory's dad who's kind of adorable we've got dinosaurs on a spaceship we've got the bickering robots who I love you want to talk about actual decent tribute to Douglas Adams these sorts these sort of bickering robots that feels very Douglas Adams desk so I enjoyed them a lot the closing note with Solomon and the way it ends is it's not completely out of place and it's not as jarring as some of the gear as some of the tonal gear shifts that didn't work in Torchwood some of the early ones but it is a bit of a shift from this you know good fun time to oh the doctors kind of kind of killed somebody okay seems like a like a bit much but like I said even though it doesn't I'm not sure quite makes that transition it's not nearly as jarring as as it could have been so this this for me is one that's just a lot of fun again it's no it's no great brilliant episode but I find it quite enjoyable it's light fluff and finally last episode written by Chris Chibnall because yeah he has not written nearly as many of episodes of Doctor Who itself as you would flop but let's talk about the power of three which is a pretty heavily maligned episode and again one that I think is better than a lot of people give it credit for I think a lot of people hold the conclusion and the wrap-up of this episode against the rest of it and I'm not gonna say that's an invalid thing to do because it really fails to stick the landing the ending is very rushed and not explained exceptionally well and the ideas that are in it seem way too big to just be tossed together at this last minute here what bits of it I could make sense out of it does just seem like the the idea for the bulk of the episode is one thing and then the conclusion is almost like it's a little pocket thing and this doesn't work but this I'd actually say for the most part does I like the idea of both this slow invasion you know these things just show up and do not and the idea of the doctor hanging out waiting for them to do something kind of going a little stir-crazy kind of getting cabin fever by being stuck on one planet for so long I think that's a neat idea and I think what it brought out of him as a character this also got to be you know we got some more time with with Rory's dad which I enjoyed again because he's just kind of adorable and so we we've got a bit of that I like Amy and Rory in general so that they're working for me just the the build up I felt worked the conclusion felt part it just it doesn't it barely makes sense and what does make sense feels like a bad fit for what came before it and again there's part of me that doesn't know how much to blame Chibnall for that cuz I don't know how much of this was he was given here's what its gonna be you know by Moffat but at the end of the day it's it was still his job to weave together the build up in the conclusion and they don't they don't mess it's just kind of cruising along and then runs into a tree and that is the entirety of Chris Chibnall contributions to Doctor Who up to this point so I haven't talked about all these what conclusions do I have overall well I think it's slightly troubling that what I consider to be his best stuff was a done on Torchwood because I think by far his best thing that he that he's written for doctor who was Kiss Kiss Bang Bang but the other good ones from from there the three parter finale for series 2 of that show countryside like those were really good pieces of work and they were first show that was Doctor Who related but wasn't doctor who was very different tone wise and were also a while ago his work on Doctor Who itself tops out depending on your on your sort of thinking and your mentalities his best work is probably II the Silurian two-parter or dinosaurs on a spaceship to spend depending on whether or not you could roll with the fun of that I know again I know some people hate it or you know what either one neither is great neither is brilliant they're both good even forty two is is decent but his highs aren't that high and his lows are pretty low that said his absolute worst material the dredges of his output was the very first stuff he was writing day one and cyber woman are painful they're really really bad but he it does look like he got the worst of his stuff out of his system when he started and he was better after that not always at the same level and and his highest levels seem to have been with a different show so if I were to extrapolate from this I would my concerns and this is not me saying this is what will happen cuz even even you know taking all this into account he has not written for Doctor Who in a long time he didn't write it all for it during Capaldi Zaire he was off doing broadchurch and his own stuff so it's been a while regardless but if I'm looking at this output I would say my concern is whether he has adjustable enough to be able to blend elements and tone and mood that is fitting for Doctor Who or if he's going to shift the tone of the show to be more in line with what it was on Torchwood which he seemed to be a little bit more at home writing and have a better handle on once he got over the stumbling blocks of the first two episodes he wrote and that I do not want that I do not want darker who to ever adopt the tone of Torchwood and you know I brought churches something that I I I have only seen a little of I am working my way through I'm God kind of deal with that a little bit later down the line but from what I've seen of it you know knowing how seriously minded I do worry to a certain degree about his ability to capture the fun of Doctor Who and I know he's not incapable of that because like I said dinosaurs on a spaceship is great fun but there are also times where his use of fun really clashes with more serious moments I think the power of three is a decent example of that so looking at his output overall there are a lot of reasons to be concerned but I also do see a writer who seems to at least try to learn from his mistakes like the horrendous issues that exist in day one and cyber woman don't recur again after that those problems got left behind pretty much after that and you know the the gimmick of 42 he doesn't feel like elements are as tacked on at least if they are they feel like they would have been men like Rory having to die at the end of the selarón two-parter I'm pretty sure this was just the point the series where that needed to happen so yeah it's a little tacked on but that's probably because it was literally tacked on and I wouldn't blame Chibnall for that so I feel like I look at not only what he's written but the order in which it came out and I feel like I see a writer who isn't just trying to impose what he thinks works onto the material I feel like I see a writer who try something and adjusts after that which is a good thing what it could feasibly mean is we start out rough and get better depending on how solid his starting place is with Doctor Who once he gets there but we'll see so that's sort of my breakdown in my own personal thoughts on all the Doctor Who related material that Chris Chibnall has written what are your thoughts on some more any or all of these episodes what do you think about what Chibnall may or may not be bringing to Doctor Who as showrunner when that starts up later this year whatever your thoughts are drop something down the comments let's talk about it there's all the stuff to do such as like and subscribe and support me on patreon a follow me on Twitter and links for all that stuff and much more is down in the description right there so until next time this council is adjourned [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Council of Geeks

Views: 24,061

Rating: 4.8696885 out of 5

Keywords: doctor who, torchwood, chibnall, 42, end of days, jack harkness, day one, kiss kiss bang bang, cold blood, hungry earth, power of three, dinosaurs on a spaceship, fragments, adrift, countrycide

Id: Ip_siVDqq5c

Length: 36min 3sec (2163 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 08 2018