August 22: "The Ghost Monument"

Finally, we get the opening titles properly at the start of the episode. (The very start, as it turns out; bucking the previously established norm, none of series 11's episodes have a cold open -- they all begin old school, with the title sequence.) I have to confess to being a touch disappointed that Jodie Whittaker's face isn't in the titles, though.

So we carry on from last time's cliffhanger by having our four regulars picked up by a couple passing spaceships, who are on their way to a planet that's not where it's supposed to be, for reasons that are never adequately explained. "I tracked my TARDIS here, but the planet had fallen out of orbit. We landed where the planet should've been," the Doctor tells the others, as if planets fell out of orbit all the time, and that's all we hear about it. They arrive on a desolate planet named, appropriately, Desolation, becoming involved in the last leg of the final Rally of the Twelve Galaxies, where the last two remaining contestants, Epzo and Angstrom (the two who picked the Doctor and company up), have to cross dangerous terrain to the location of the "Ghost Monument" -- quickly revealed (thankfully, for those of us who had already worked it out) to be the Doctor's TARDIS.

"The Ghost Monument" was filmed mainly in South Africa, and consequently it's the vast scenery that's the real star here. We get lots of sweeping vistas and gorgeous, very-definitely-not-in-Wales backdrops that really give the episode an open feel. And director Mark Tonderai takes advantage, with lots of shots that show off the vastness of the location, really making it feel like we could be on another planet. That's definitely a plus, because the story itself isn't particularly exciting: it's basically just get from point A to point B, with some incidents along the way. There's no real twist or shift in the narrative; they take a while to get to the Ghost Monument, and then they do.

But on some level Chris Chibnall realizes this, and to his credit he gives us some good character moments. There's the Doctor's declaration that she never uses guns, and that brains are always better than bullets -- and, countering that, Ryan's charging at the SniperBots (™, one presumes) with a laser gun because he's played Call of Duty, only to panic when he realizes his "just shoot them" plan isn't working, is a lot of fun. We also get some good moments with the guest characters, Epzo and Angstrom, with Epzo's story about how his mom failed to catch him when he jumped out of a tree at the age of four giving us a nice insight into his character. But the best moment is between Ryan and Graham, as they're trying to fix the boat that will take them across the flesh-eating-microbe-infested water, where Graham tries to get Ryan to open up a bit by talking about what Grace would say to them. "You talk about this stuff way too much," Ryan says dismissively. "And you don't talk about it enough," Graham replies. It's a nice, understated exchange.

But as I said, the episode itself isn't the most exciting thing ever. They also slightly put a foot wrong by making both the race that destroyed Desolation and the race that attacked Angstrom's race the Stenza. This might have worked better if the only Stenza we'd seen up to this point hadn't been Tzim-Sha/Tim Shaw, who was shown to be a cheat but also the future leader of the Stenza. Taking care of Tim Shaw didn't seem like that much effort for the Doctor (despite the cost of Grace's death), so this attempt to make the Stenza seem like a really powerful, super dangerous race falls a bit flat. Maybe Chibnall's got plans to make the Stenza a lot more impressive that we just haven't seen yet, but as of writing Tim Shaw's the only one we've got to go on, and he doesn't really impress. There's also a slightly odd moment where the weird talking pieces of cloth (the Remnants, according to the credits) look into the Doctor's mind: "You lead but you're scared, too, for yourself and for others," the Remnant says. "Afraid of your own newness. We see deeper, though, further back. The Timeless Child." "What did you just say?" the Doctor asks. "She doesn't know," the Remnant replies. "We see what's hidden even from yourself. The outcast, abandoned and unknown." It feels a lot like setup for the overarching theme of the series (much like, say, Harold Saxon in series 3 or the Hybrid in series 9) -- except (again, as of writing) this doesn't come up again. So consequently with hindsight it actually feels more like a weird draft artifact, a bit of mystery that got injected before being ignored in favor of something more compelling (kind of like Captain Jack's missing two years' worth of memories in "The Doctor Dances").

But countering that artifact of new-school Who that doesn't go anywhere (yet), "The Ghost Monument" has a sense of old-school Who that runs through this episode beyond just the lack of a cold open. The Doctor isn't shown to already know everything that's going on; she's discovering things at the same time we are. We also see everything through her eyes and those of her friends: no "meanwhile" sequences where we see villains plotting or anything like that. That's a rather a Hartnell-feeling move. Similarly, the moment where they run through the characteristics of acetylene (lighter than air, smells like garlic, etc.) also has an educational vibe to it that would presumably make Sydney Newman proud. It feels like Chris Chibnall is deliberately taking the show back to its roots, bringing it more in line with the original vision of the show than what Davies and Moffat had done. It's kind of a welcome change, although it's not a super-flashy or thrilling one. It's more that the emphasis has shifted, but not in a bad way.

The new TARDIS interior. ("The Ghost Monument") ©BBC
And so the episode ends with the Doctor finally reclaiming the TARDIS, which has undergone a redesign both inside and out. The exterior changes aren't that dramatic (a black plate for the "Open to the Public" sign instead of the old white one, a slightly different color of blue, the loss of the St. John Ambulance flash, slight changes to the windows), but the interior has undergone a definite overhaul. In some ways it resembles the "coral" look of Eccleston's and Tennant's TARDIS, only with crystals instead of coral, while the central console is round instead of hexagonal (again, like the coral version), with a giant hunk of crystal replacing the time rotor. Meanwhile, the walls are covered with overlapping metal hexagons with circle cutouts, giving it a feel of both roundels and the hexagons from the other BBC Wales versions. I don't know that I like this design that much, to be honest, but part of the issue might be that it's incredibly dark inside -- this may be the darkest a TARDIS console room has ever been, so it's kind of hard to see what it actually looks like. The overall impression is a murky one, which isn't my preference. Having the full police box shape (three of the four walls, at least) grafted onto the wall of the console room is a nice touch, though.

So "The Ghost Monument" has some good moments, and generally speaking it looks great, but it's not a terribly memorable episode. There's not really anything particularly wrong with it, and there are some admirable attempts to liven up the proceedings, but this is ultimately another one for the "pleasantly average" column, likely to be best remembered for the reveal of the new TARDIS than anything else going on in it.