Doctor Who New Year’s Special Review: Resolution
Let me be frank: Doctor Who Season 11 wasn’t what I hoped it would be. It started out strong. It had its moments, and it had some great stories, but it lacked the cohesion and mythology of its predecessors.
The Doctor Who New Year’s Day Special, “Resolution,” takes the storytelling to a new level and in a direction I was hoping to see at some point during the series run.
One of my chief complaints throughout this past season was how there wasn’t really any larger mythology attached to the stories. While all the performances were good, the construction of the series as a whole wasn’t giving me any mystery to hold onto week after week.
Ryan (TOSIN COLE), Graham (BRADLEY WALSH)
“Resolution’s” use of the Daleks and how the story unfolds went a long way to satisfying that void and resulted in a storyline that felt a lot more like a season finale than a festive special.
So far, The Thirteenth Doctor hasn’t encountered any creatures from the standard Doctor Who mythology that longtime fans are familiar with, but if you have to pick one to steer this incarnation into the general mythology it would be The Daleks.
The question is, how do you bring the Daleks back in a new and surprising way.
The Daleks have come back so many times and The Doctor’s companions have staved off death at the hands of the Daleks so often that it’s almost hard to make them scary. There’s no real threat to The Doctor or her companions unless they’re setting up for regeneration. However, what “Resolution” does really well is dial down the threat to such a degree that it becomes insidious for most of the episode.
When we’ve seen the Daleks in past episodes it’s mostly been as a fleet that choruses “exterminate.” But this one Dalek is alone and facing off against unsuspecting humans. Seeing Lin try to fight against its control of her is also a very scary and terrifying sequence and bringing the fight to a level where it’s a one-on-one battle of wills is a dynamic we haven’t seen before from the Daleks.
Most plots with The Daleks tend to be a little more theatrical, such as Doctor Who Season 9 Episode 2, “The Witch’s Familiar,” but “Resolution” is more about the people involved in the fight. There are grand threats about conquering Earth, but it’s a much more intimate set up than many we’ve seen in the past.
Likewise, placing The Doctor against this one very determined, and very intelligent creature also gives Jodie Whittaker a chance to have a good, “I’m The Doctor and you are the Daleks” moment.
It’s satisfying for what “Resolution” does with The Doctor and Dalek narrative. The ninth-century Dalek doesn’t seem to know who she is until she’s standing in front of it and it counts her two hearts. (Makes sense, it’s twelve centuries removed from what The Doctor might have looked like then.) The result is a quieter game of cat and mouse that is still just as interesting as any impassioned speech The Doctor may have given to a room full of screeching metal aliens.
While “Resolution” did satisfy a tie into the long-running Doctor Who mythology, it also paid off some of the angst that had been building with Ryan over his Dad contacting him.
First mentioned in Doctor Who Season 11 Episode 4, “Arachnids in the UK,” Ryan’s relationship with his father influenced a lot of his interactions with different characters throughout the series including the pregnant male in “The Tsungara Conundrum” and the father’s action in “It Takes You Away.”
Finally meeting his father and having the chance to see that relationship on screen was a good payoff to those breadcrumbs.
Plus, seeing Ryan’s dad provide a possible solution for eliminating the Dalek is an ideal way to tie him into the story. He could easily be a side character that we’d have forgotten, but his engineering and his work on a “microwave and an oven” could give the team an avenue for more Earth-based stories.
To ice the cake, the moment when Ryan saves his dad from getting sucked into a sun going supernova is a very touching and redeeming moment. Doctor Who has always been a series where love and hope triumph over evil, and when a Dalek’s only emotion is hate, it’s a good counterbalance.
The resulting relationship between Ryan and his Dad at the end of “Resolution” seems far from healed, but it seems promising. Aaron’s request that Ryan call him when he gets back from his next adventure is a fitting end.
Leaving Aaron on Earth also gives Ryan and Graham a grounding element to their story in a similar way that Yaz’s family grounds her and has pulled the Tardis back to earth on a few occasions.
Doctor Who can be at its strongest when the companions have lives outside of the Tardis and give The Doctor a reason to come back to Earth.
I compare these connections like Martha Jones going to work for U.N.I.T. after she leaves the Tardis and Clara’s job as a teacher through Seasons 8 and 9. These threads enriched the characters and gave them more than a flat personality of just an assistant.
“Resolution” is what I am hoping Doctor Who Season 12 is like, it continues the character development of Team Tardis while still giving us stories we can be excited by. I am also hoping that they return to Earth a little more, now that both Yaz and Ryan have family ties there so that The Doctor can be a little more present in her stewardship of Earth.
Stray Thoughts:
- Petition to start calling all our doorbells “intruder alarms?”
- “Resolution” also includes a lot more Tardis action! Which is another thing I am hoping we get more of in Season 12! The thing has a custard creme dispenser! I am not sure why we aren’t spending more time on it!
- Charlotte Ritchie’s performance as Lin is a standout this episode. The scenes with the un-cased Dalek on her back controlling her were some of the best of the episode.
- Tardis Fam celebrated nineteen New Year’s Eves including solar fireworks. That sounds like one wild party.
- The Dalek usurping the internet and all communications signals on a day when “everything closed and everyone is hungover” has to be the most comedic thing any alien has ever done. The brief intercut of a family being frustrated by lack of devices is a little too real.
- The moment when The Doctor tries to call U.N.I.T. for help and gets the switchboard operator was another hilarious moment. You’d think someone from U.N.I.T. would have told “The President of Earth” that the organization no longer existed. Listening to The Doctor tell off this overly polite bureaucratic drone was a great payoff to the moment.
- How long until the fan art of the junkyard chic Dalek pops up, or the action figure. Won’t lie, I am low-key into junkyard Dalek’s look? Is it okay if I call it Junky? I think Junky is a good name for this Dalek!
What did you think of this episode of Doctor Who? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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Doctor Who will return with Series 12 in 2020.
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Lauren Busser
Lauren Busser is an Associate Editor at Tell-Tale TV. She is a writer of fiction and nonfiction whose work has appeared in Bitch Media, Popshot Quarterly, Brain Mill Press Voices, and The Hartford Courant.